The Best Revenge
by Laryna6
Summary: ...is living well. So, well, live. A war against angels involving the sons of Adam. Eldritch abominations, all but one intent on wiping out humanity. The septentriones and YHVH's angels want a rematch with the human race. Oh, and demons are about to break loose in Tokyo-3, but that's just a side effect of arming the civilians. Shinji, Rei, Asuka? Let's Survive.
1. Original Wife

_This is a Devil Survivor-focused crossover mainly, and if you don't know the games you're probably not going to have much idea of what's going on. However, given the biblical apocrypha stuff in Eva (like DS1) and Devil Survivor 2's plot? I like the idea of NERV and SEELE finding out that actually, the world doesn't necessarily have to take them and their crap. Humanity is not helpless against angels without SEELE's world-ending Evas (although the angels in question want a rematch…). On the other hand, Gendo is not dumb and SEELE is an ancient conspiracy/cult._

_Instead of powering up or down various groups to try to make them even (Power Creep, Power Seep) I figured I'd just toss DS magitech in there. Gendo and SEELE can certainly figure out how to make use of it on their own if Yamato Hotsuin could use Alcor's summon app when Alcor wanted him dead for betraying humanity. _

_Although Alcor is too nice to do anything but suck at killing people, even though he annihilated an eldritch abomination with a snap of his fingers the first time he showed up.__ Despite his power level, like the second-to-last angel the hardest part of the boss fight against the Sword of Polaris is the, "Nooooo, Kaworu/Alcor!" part if you learned the strategies well enough to survive Yamato and Rolando. Alcor's intent was to arm humanity so they could defend themselves, and he _definitely_ did a good job. Demon summoning in Devil Survivor is, "a big gun for the people who are still alive," hence the series title. _

_Sons of Adam with white hair and red eyes… Had to be done. Although Al Saiduq/Alcor is an actual Kaworu expy, Naoya and Kaworu are so very unlike each other in every way other than looks & the charisma that seems to run in the family (Abel and Hiro both pick up lots of party members). It would be fun to contrast Kaworu's naiveté (he has no idea that Shinji is staring at a certain part of him during the bath scene) with Naoya's sheer amount of practice observing and manipulating people. Imagine if Gendo had been doing this for _thousands of years_. _

_On top of, "We humans declare our intent here and now to fight to stay human!" Naoya/Cain likes killing angels too much to stay out of Evangelion. He's all glee about it in his and Yuzu's Eighth Days. _

_Shin Megami Tensei protagonists & major supporting cast are very dangerous people. They kind of have to be in a franchise where gods and god-level eldritch abominations can be random encounters. _

* * *

"Commander Ikari." The young official nodded a regal greeting as he took his seat, his aide Makoto Sato remaining standing at his back.

"Director Hotsuin." Gendo Ikari nodded his own greeting, hands steepled thoughtfully. He wasn't surprised by these proceedings. The weakness of the Third Angel had made the Japanese government overconfident, so they had to be allowed to exhaust themselves attempting to defeat the Fourth Angel on their own before the Eva could be deployed. It worked out perfectly for his purposes, since it would take some time for his son to be transported to the Geofront, he was sure.

After creating the false front that was the Marduk Institute, it was obvious to Gendo that JPs was not what it seemed. Geomagnetism? If not for the fact his investigations had revealed that it predated Second Impact, he would have assumed that it was a product of the Japanese government grasping at straws trying to protect its cities against a second tsunami. Tokyo had survived Second Impact far more intact than one would have assumed: it remained the country's capital, while Tokyo-2 was the UN administrative center and Tokyo-3 held the all-important, from Gendo's perspective, NERV.

Commander Fushimi was the next to arrive, still talking into his phone making final arrangements until he nodded. "Good luck, Captain Izuna." Putting it away, he went over to the NERV table and held out his hand. "Dr. Ikari, I'm glad you could make it."

Gendo had to rise to shake it, of course: Commander Fushimi was a good man, dedicated to the defense of Japan. He'd proven that to everyone else here during the business of the Third Angel, and while Gendo had no use for friendliness failing to return the Commander's gesture of respect would have made everyone else present lose respect for him. Well, once Japan saw that it needed NERV, he wouldn't have to play these games anymore: they'd finally realize he had them over a barrel. He'd hoped to make them fund the construction of Tokyo-3's conventional defense system, but they'd pay for not giving him those resources today, since the Commander's protégé Captain Izuna was leading the JSDF forces in the field. Gendo hoped he would be able to conceal his gloating long enough to offer his condolences for the loss.

The Commander's companion Dr. Naoya Minegeshi had gone straight to his own seat next to Director Hotsuin, ignoring the NERV delegation altogether to watch the screen with the approaching Fourth Angel with an anticipatory smirk, already opening his handheld device.

Gendo was going to _enjoy _watching him fail. It didn't matter what the Japanese government thought his weapons system could do: there was nothing that could handle an AT field like the Fourth Angel's except another AT field.

Unless, of course, that was what he would be deploying. Again, if not for the fact that the red-eyed Dr. Naoya Minegeshi predated Second Impact? GEHIRN had spent _years _trying to recruit one of the two computer scientists whose genius eclipsed that of Dr. Naoko Akagi. In the years after Second Impact, Dr. Minegeshi had shifted his focus to biology, inventing processes to reclaim land from LCL contamination and even break LCL down into fertilizer, returning the nutrients and biomass trapped by LCL into the soil. Releasing the Qin anti-LCL solution into rivers had even allowed the reclamation of coastal marshes and created small areas where sea life could survive in its natural habitat. Because of that, Dr. Minegeshi was the UN's scientific poster boy for humanity's fight to reclaim its planet, not NERV and the Committee for Human Instrumentality. While that frustrated Gendo, SEELE was actually pleased it had turned out this way, since it meant the Committee attracted less media attention and could remain in the shadows.

It also meant Gendo was entirely dependent on SEELE for funds, since the world's governments were more focused on reclaiming their land and feeding their surviving people than dealing with a hypothetical threat only a handful knew was the true cause of Second Impact.

They'd brought Dr. Minegeshi in to analyze the Third Angel, and most likely realized how Angels were similar in composition to LCL and the Qin molecule would be effective… If it could penetrate their AT fields.

If anything, all of this would just make it more satisfying to see all their efforts prove as utterly useless as bullets and conventional weapons.

Dr. Minegeshi finally turned away from the screen to ask Director Hotsuin, "By the way, how is Hiro?" After Second Impact family had become even more important to the surviving Japanese in their struggle to hold on to their islands instead of being forced to give up on their homeland. The unexplained failure of China's nuclear assault on Tokyo-1 had become the modern equivalent of the Divine Wind that wrecked an invading armada centuries ago. That and the charismatic priestess Amane Kuzuryu were rekindling faith in the old Shinto religion of Japan. The Hotsuin were a very old clan, and one of Dr. Minegeshi's cousins marrying the head of the clan hadn't hurt the prestige of either him or Director Hotsuin.

It wasn't a secret that the Japanese government wanted the geofront, as a geologic anomaly, to be under the administrative control of JPs. If it weren't for Director Hotsuin not pursuing the matter himself and the UN's determination to keep control over somewhere so important to the survival of mankind as a whole, too important to be left in the control of a single country that many were predicting would become one of the post-Second Impact world's superpowers, Gendo wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.

Having so little control over the scenario, being indebted to others: SEELE was bad enough, but people who didn't know most of the truth, who didn't need him? Who didn't want instrumentality, unlike SEELE who would go along with Gendo's plans ninety percent of the way?

The Japanese government and UN observers were coming into the room in force now: some meeting must have gotten out, or rather the after-meeting schmoozing ended, since of course the doctor, director and commander would have been a key part of such a meeting even if Gendo wasn't invited because he must have last-minute preparations to make over at NERV, of course.

"Well?" Director Hotsuin asked two among their number.

Dr. Fumi Kanno just smirked, the JPs staff member seating herself next to Dr. Minegeshi as Dr. Al Saiduq took a seat next to Director Hotsuin, the arrangement just more proof of how interrelated the power structure here was. "We've loaded both versions to both servers, just in case, and Io is standing by," the pale Arabic man, if he was Arabic (that region had been devastated too), told the Director.

"I'm still concerned about the Contamination Zone," Commander Fushimi interjected.

"There's no need to worry at this point. Limited use won't contaminate an area, and the power of Bel can control the numbers in order to weaken the angels without any significant risk of dimensional absorption," Dr. Minegeshi said dismissively, and Gendo took note of all the terms there. AT fields and all the technobabble they'd cloaked the true nature of the Evas in was designed to be incomprehensible to those outside the know. Dr. Minegeshi would have created his own terms for whatever he thought he'd discovered, but since Gendo knew the key he would be able to crack the code as soon as NERV's importance was recognized and he had the authority to order Dr. Minegeshi to hand his findings over to Ritsuko. His findings, as opposed to his products. He'd given NERV quite a few programs, but without his library, his annotations or anything else they couldn't be reverse engineered, even by the Magi.

"Well, you're the expert," Fushimi admitted, and it was yet more proof that Gendo had failed to attain _control, _even in his own backyard.

Dr. Minegeshi's unimpressed look proved that in his own mind at least, of _course _he was. "What you should worry about is Betesnach's passive skill. If one of them manages to create an equivalent to that, then your government will have to make a decision as to whether or not to allow Director Hotsuin to do his job."

"In that sort of situation, I'm sure Commander Ikari's Eva units would prove their worth," Commander Fushimi said, which just proved how dangerous he was to Gendo's goals. The man was too damn _reasonable_. While most of the JSDF didn't like or want the precedent of the UN fighting an enemy on Japan's own (reclaimed) soil or the implication that they couldn't protect themselves without help, Commander Fushimi had spent the years leading up to this giving officers stern talkings-to about how their mission was to protect the people of Japan, and what about NERV and their own loss of face, if they weren't allowed to do what they existed for in the first place? If anything, rejecting Commander Fushimi's overtures to plan joint operations had made Gendo look like the unreasonable one.

Well, they'd see that Gendo was right and all of them weren't doing anything but getting in NERV's way soon.

"Target has entered kill zone," Captain Izuna reported, and the lights in the room dimmed as everyone's attention went to the screens. "Requesting permission to begin."

"Permission granted," Commander Fushimi told her. "Begin the assault with conventional weapons, but I want everyone to be careful out there."

"Yes, sir. I want all units-" Commander Izuna began to issue orders as the angel made its way towards the geofront. When it passed an invisible line, the JSDF troops opened fire with machine guns and RPGs, but only for a few brief seconds. "Commander, we've confirmed that this one is also undamaged by conventional weapons," Izuna said as the angel counterattacked some of her forces, the JSDF troops already abandoning their previous positions as planned to avoid the counterattack.

"Understood, Captain. Your troops are now authorized to activate the DS Program, and I will take full responsibility for the outcome. You may make use of the harmonizer function, passive and auto skills _only, _Captain. Is that understood."

"Understood. Activate DSP!" The redheaded captain in green fatigues ordered. "Advance and engage the enemy!"

It was when the angel screamed, bullets ripping into it as easily as into human flesh that Gendo Ikari realized that he might have a problem. It was when Captain Izuna holstered her gun and ran forward to engage the downed angel with her _bare hands_ and it _worked_ that he knew that both he and SEELE had somehow missed the independent development of AT field technology that didn't require the Evas that were necessary to bring about instrumentality.

It was when a single punch shattered the core and everyone at Dr. Minegeshi's table looked like this was going according to their scenario (except Dr. Minegeshi, who looked as though the death screams of angels were music to his ears), that he knew that he _couldn't _try to absorb them into his own resources. They knew too much, and they might know enough to take one look at the Eva data and realize his true intentions.

* * *

As _she _watched the angel die, Misato Katsuragi wondered if maybe she'd signed up for the wrong group.

* * *

"From observing the bodies of the Third and Fourth angels, we can confirm that angels are a different kind of matter: in addition to the problem of penetrating their AT fields, conventional matter just can't interact with them well enough to actually damage their structures unless it's backed by an AT field even if the angel hasn't raised theirs. According to the information packet I requested from Dr. Saiduq," who Ritsuko had identified as the nice one out of the three JPs scientists: Naoya and Fumi would just have smirked. "The harmonizer function of the DS program," whatever that stood for, "doesn't just adjust the human AT field to protect their bodies instead of their minds. It actually converts the wavelengths involved so that physical matter and angelic matter can interact on an even footing. Hence the name Harmonizer: musical harmonies are created when sound waves interact in ways that reinforce each other. It doesn't just make it easier to damage angelic matter: it also makes it harder to damage physical matter, which is how the JSDF troops were able to survive direct hits from the angel's laser."

"They weren't even singed," Maya agreed, mystified.

"Actually, they were a lot worse than singed. The damage would have been distributed over their entire wave-structure. What that means is that someone in range of the harmonizer can keep fighting until they've taken enough damage that the waves that manifest as the particles that make up the matter of their bodies have been nullified, and they essentially disintegrate. The bad part of that, however, is consistent with the observed fact that N2 and energy weapons are able to do more damage to angelic matter than physical weapons, the matter of AT fields aside. The negative effect on the bodies of those soldiers will be similar to the effects of gamma radiation, which also disrupts energy levels and wavelengths inside the human body. Theoretically, every soldier who took part in that battle will either be dead by tomorrow or die of cancer within five years. If that was all there was to the DS Program."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "Commander Fushimi seemed aware that this was a very dangerous procedure, but it seemed to be one where he was familiar with the risks. He would have been much more uncomfortable if his unit really had suffered that many casualties."

"The harmonizer function is actually a relatively small subset of the DSP, and Commander Fushimi made a point of _only _allowing them to make use of it and other passive functions," Ritsuko agreed. "I've heard a lot about Dr. Minegeshi. We haven't seen anything yet."

Gendo leaned forward. "How soon will you find out what exactly it is that we're dealing with?" And how to disable it? The good news was that SEELE was in an absolute uproar, but the contempt they'd developed for Gendo meant that they weren't holding him responsible, oh no. He couldn't have been expected to see this coming. Now was the perfect time to do just about anything he wanted while remaining under their radar.

"I won't be able to do anything until we manage to acquire some hardware. All the parts of the DSP except the harmonizer function are designed to not only run only on a custom operating system, but Al Saiduq mentioned that the comp he showed me had been rebuilt. The DSP is actually a _client _program: most of what we need isn't actually in the software package we were given. That software isn't self-contained: all it really does is communicate with the server. It's the server that contains the real programs that run the actual processes, and a computer can't connect to the server without that custom hardware."

In other words, having the DSP was like having the phone number to a pizza place. It wasn't the same as having a pizza recipe, let alone ingredients and an oven. It was also completely useless without a working telephone in order to call up the pizza place to have them make the pie and deliver it to you.

It was a well-designed secure system designed to frustrate the hell out of hackers by making it clear that they were utterly denied access and the admin was LOLing at their hubris. How cute, that they thought they could do as they pleased with _his _baby.

"It was Dr. Atsuro Kihara that rewrote the harmonizer to let it run on standard hardware, according to his annotations," Ritsuko offered Gendo as proof she wasn't absolutely useless, even if the only real suggestion she could make was that he steal her some hardware and waylay Dr. Minegeshi's former apprentice and the scientific advisor to the Japanese government, which was admitting that neither she nor the Magi were up to the challenge. "Our other alternative is to locate the server."

"Servers," Gendo recalled. "Dr. Saiduq mentioned that there were two servers, and two programs."

Ritsuko perked up at that. "And they're cross-compatible?" They were probably still built from the ground up for this purpose, but that still meant there was hope this could run on the Magi.

"Hmm," was what Gendo said. "They also seem to have some analysis capability." Captain Izuna had told Fushimi that this one was 'weak to physical' and that the rest probably weren't such pushovers. The ability to spot the vulnerabilities of the angels? "Use the magi to locate the servers." He'd have someone acquire the hardware.

* * *

"You want a comp?" the man asked Ryoji, who nodded. "Yes, I can get you a comp," Honda said, face professionally blank. "NERV wouldn't be the first client I've acquired one for."

"Oh? Because both the UN and SEELE are running around like chickens with their heads cut off." So who outside of the Japanese government knew about this ahead of time?

"Well, I don't mind telling you under the circumstances: it was JPs, actually." Everyone already knew they had comps, so Honda wasn't violating serious confidentiality. Not enough to care when Ryoji would owe him big for this. "Naoya Minegeshi was the original inventor of the summon program, and Fumi Kanno developed a homebrew version for JPs."

"A homebrew version…" Rits would be glad to know those were possible. If Kaji verified that it was a good idea to tell her when that meant telling Gendo Ikari. "The summon program?"

Honda just smiled to himself, but at least it was an expression other than that helpful, upstanding citizen office drone mask. "Boot up an altered comp, and you'll find out for yourself," he said, getting up from the bench they were seated on. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go fetch you a comp."

Kaji didn't bother trying to follow him. Honda was good at shaking tails: Kaji could swear he'd been looking right at him once and he'd _still _vanished.

He was back in a couple of minutes, and spread five out on the table. "This one's mine," he told Kaji, which meant hands off or they would have a problem, the kind that would result in anyone other than Kaji never being seen again. There was a reason Honda didn't answer to any particular Yakuza group, why such a dangerous agent even on the other side of the law from those Kaji served (theoretically) was an independent and still breathing. "One for each of your masters," NERV, the UN and SEELE, and Kaji realized that this was a warning: if Honda knew and was volunteering the information, then it was practically common knowledge. Was Kaji fooling anyone? Why wasn't he dead yet? What uses did all three groups have for him, because he was a dead man if any of them no longer did? "And one for you, Ryoji. Don't boot it up until you're certain you're unobserved, and somewhere no one will care about the odd gunshot."

"How much do I owe you?" Kaji asked, because this was going to be pricey.

"Let's discuss that _after _you've booted the program. I'm in no particular need of money, and if you don't focus on watching your back then you're not going to be in a position to do anyone any favors, hmm?"

Yeah, Kaji realized, he really had gotten himself in some deep shit, huh.

Honda patted him on the shoulder. "Just focus on surviving for now." He relaxed his perfect posture for a bit to lean back on the bench. "This takes me back… Making sure you survived was the reason I acquired a comp in the first place myself."

"Oh?"

"Nevermind, son. What do you say I treat you to a beer?" That was why they'd met in Omotesando, after all: the bar Eiji was just a few blocks away.

* * *

"Then China dropped an N2 mine on Tokyo, since the city shouldn't have survived so they thought it was proof Japan had advance warning and hadn't shared it with the rest of the world," Shinji's teacher rambled on as a text appeared on Shinji's phone in the class chat room.

_Hey, new kid: have you signed up for Nicaea yet?_

_Suzuhara! _The class rep responded.

_No, seriously, it's legit. I got a death clip of my sister getting crushed in one of the shelters: a whole bunch of other people got clips too, so there was barely anyone in that shelter when the angel showed up, and look what happened!_

_What's Nicaea? _Shinji asked, because it was less boring than listening to the teacher.

_It means City of Victory: neat, huh? Wouldn't that be a much better name for this place than Tokyo-3? Oh, I'm Kensuke Aida. _

_I know Nicaea works, Touji, but we're in class right now. I know I introduced myself earlier, but I'm the class rep, HIkari Horaki, and it's my responsibility to make sure that new students are up to handling the school and Tokyo-3. Shinji, I'll show you how to make a Nicaea account and Kensuke and I will explain what we know during break. Living here is a little dangerous, so don't hesitate to ask me, Kensuke or anyone else for help, alright?_

* * *

"Here, I'll send you the link," Hikari said. "First you create an account, and choose your Tico."

"Get the bunnygirl, man, definitely the bunnygirl," Touji told him.

Hikari took Shinji's phone long enough to select the male Tico in a suit. Purple hair? "So you can see the site, right?"

"Yeah, it loaded fine."

"Yeah, that's just it," Kensuke said, leaning forward. "Not everyone can. My mom can't even see the clips: I had one pulled up and she thought the screen was blank. Everyone younger than fifteen can, but only like a handful of adults. My Tico said it's because everyone born after Second Impact got a bit of the fallout, and it takes 'potential' to see the site, although he wouldn't tell me much more than that."

"It will send you a clip if someone you know is about to die. For real, man. And if you hustle, you can generally keep it from happening. You saw how the buildings came back up after the angel fight, right?" Touji told him. "They had a lot of construction accidents, a hell of a lot. The gears and everything, and hanging upside-down inside the geofront: it was just really dangerous. Then someone found Nicaea online, and it's my dad that showed it to me. He saved like three of his friends just in two weeks, and now there's my sister."

"Boys, you're not letting the Tico explain how it works to him!" Hikari scolded, because this was important. "When he's done, do you mind if I get your number and add you to my contacts? I want to make sure everyone in the class is on my Fate Viewer, so I get your death clips and can let you know about them."

"Oh, right: it doesn't send you your own death clips," Kensuke added. "Isn't that weird? It just sends them to your friends, you know, people who would try to save your life. The people you have a connection with and the strength of the connection show up under the fate viewer part of the app."

"So what if you don't have any friends?" Shinji asked.

The three of them looked at each other, because they knew what would happen. The construction worker deaths still hadn't stopped, not completely. "Don't worry," Hikari told Shinji. "I know it can be hard to make friends in a new school, but we're all going to stick together, alright? We wouldn't just let you die." It was one thing not to reach out to others when there wasn't any particular reason to do so. It was another thing to refrain from reaching out when the fate viewer made it so clear that there were two lives that depended on contact with other human beings: the other person's and one's own.

* * *

Shinji didn't find out until the following day that, "This is what he summoned me here for." The giant purple robot. His father hadn't even come to greet him or give him orders: Misato was the one who put him up at her place, and the only ones here were a bunch of technicians.

Why purple? Was it another manifestation of how little Gendo cared about his son that he stuck him in the purple one? Should he put up with this? He didn't have any reason to get in there for these tests other than vague curiosity, after all, and maybe if he made enough trouble Gendo would have to take notice of him, that was what other kids did when their parents didn't pay any attention to them.

Shinji didn't know if he wanted to make the effort or not, but since the other kids were going to force him to talk to them and he didn't really have anything else to talk about, he should probably insist that, "I'm not getting in there unless you paint it black first."

Misato looked around, more than a little annoyed that Ritsuko wasn't here. After all, this was Shinji's first sync test! What if what happened to Rei happened again? His son was about to put his life in danger, and the Commander and their Eva expert weren't here?

Weren't here to argue with Misato's orders, either. "Right, you heard the pilot! Put a rush on it; I want it done by the time I've got our pilot in his plug suit and briefed."

Maya blinked at her. "But…?"

"But? But what? It's not going to hurt combat effectiveness and you need to practice rapid repairs on short notice, so snap to it!" Misato clapped her hands. "Come on, Shinji, I'll show you where to get changed."

* * *

The handheld device's upper screen contained several folders in the menu area: all of them blank except for e-mail access and a generic sort of 'settings' area that didn't let the user control anything useful to NERV. The Magi had already reported that hacking into it wasn't happening, but there were a few programs that were checking to see whether or not certain activation criteria had been met. Clicking on a specific one of the blank folders called up a message saying: "Condition White: DS Program access denied."

Gendo wouldn't have thought that Naoya Minegeshi had a soft spot, but one of the activation criteria turned out to be 'human between the ages of seventeen and twelve who won't survive without medical assistance.' The lower age limit made sense, for a military program. There was preserving lives and then there was giving machine guns to toddlers.

Since Rei was seriously injured, she qualified, in addition to being absolutely trustworthy.

"_Condition Green,"_ the screen said seconds after she turned on the comp, sitting in the center of one of NERV's large rooms with a cord hooked up to the comp to display what it showed on the monitors for Gendo, Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko. "_Booting Demon Summoning Program."_

Text flashed by, black and white that looked like computer program format at first, so fast he could barely read more than a handful of words, but after pouring over the Secret Dead Sea Scrolls he knew Biblical text when he saw it.

"_No one is righteous: No, not one_," was the final line, before two other messages appeared, spelled out slowly.

"_Peace on Earth is dead."_

"_Let's survive." _

"At field detected. Pattern Black?" Ritsuko reported, looking at her screen as Gendo and Fuyutsuki stared at the thing that appeared in the room with Rei.

The fairy-like creature laughed and said something incomprehensible before flying at Rei with gauzy wings, trying to slice her stomach open.

"Rei!"

* * *

Thirty minutes later, an e-mail appeared in the comp that Rei did not need:

_Well, who would have thought? It's not often that I'm surprised._

_So this is why no one has seen you in fourteen years, Lilith. Though it seems it's Rei Ayanami for the moment._

_You don't know what you are, do you? But let me reassure you on one account: you aren't an angel. You never were. _

_So, care to join in the angel hunt? I was looking forward to killing some myself, but if Ikari is your contractor, I suppose we'll have to let him have some of the fun. _

_Your amused nephew, Naoya._

* * *

_Multi-strike is effing broken. 'Remember that time you bitch-slapped a sun?' _

_Remiel vs. Ramiel needs to happen, especially as Remiel is an observer angel with authority over God's Thunder, according to Naoya's 8th Day scenario. When/If I do another chapter, Rei will have gained Lilith's Temptation auto-skill from Devil Survivor 2. Since demons can be summoned by strong emotions, what patron would Asuka get? _

_I also find myself wondering about Alioth. In the absence of Shiva and his spear, would they have to use the lance to down it before it carpet-bombs all of Tokyo-3 with deadly neurotoxins?_

___Once demons start getting loose and a lockdown followed by everything outside the lockdown being swallowed by Dirac Space happens? This sets things up for very interesting times... Desperate civilians with demons to call on are fun, if you like anarchy and murder._

_Naoya put quite good security on his summoning program. The Nicaea summon app, on the other hand, runs on cell phones. Remember Naoya's FML expression in Atsuro's route when Atsuro wanted him to let the DSP run on other hardware and operating systems without compromising security and resulting in a hackable demon army? While Naoya's devil summoning program is powered by internet drama (Seriously. Naoya is a genius. And a troll.) and thus will work for anyone, the summoning app and Nicaea can only be used by those with some spiritual power of their own. Still, it's pretty close to certain Gendo would be able to use it given the strength of his emotions. I wonder what demon his obsession with Yui would call… Off the top of my head, Izanagi or Orpheus seem appropriate, given the whole '(failed) quest to recover dead wife/husband' thing. And those are protagonist demons. _


	2. Lonely One

Shinji's cellphone dinged to let him know he had an e-mail as he was driving back home with Misato. Was it one of his classmates?

A video clip? From Nicaea?

Misato, standing by her crashed car as sirens blared and civilians tried to run out of their cars. She was unloading her pistol into something that looked like a rainbow-colored ice cream cone with a squashed pink moon hovering over it, a cratered oval that kept getting larger, and larger, blowing up like a balloon.

Until it exploded.

"Wow, that's gory," Misato said, taking the words right out of Shinji's mouth instead of keeping her eyes on the road. The people nearest the thing, including Misato, were just ash, but Shinji could almost smell the burnt flesh of the people who hadn't quite managed to get far enough away. "What is it?"

"A death clip, from this website called Nicaea," Shinji said, hurrying and texting Horaki after forwarding her and the other two (his only contacts besides Misato) the e-mail. "Have you heard of it?" Was it a prank?

"No."

"Supposedly, it tells you when people are going to die so you can avoid it. The other kids at school told me about it."

There was a screeching metallic noise as something punched through the roof of a car two or three others ahead of them, then it sounded like a bomb went off. Misato swerved to avoid the car in front of her when it stalled, engine blasted off, only for another to speed up behind her and rear-end her. Shinji saw the driver looking at his cell phone with horror an instant before his airbags deployed.

"Shinji, get out of the car!" Misato ordered, scrambling out herself and drawing her gun.

The ice cream cone jumped towards them, pink thing appearing on top of it and beginning to expand as Misato fired at it and told Shinji "Run!"

"Misato, come on!" he said, wishing he could grab her but he'd gotten out on the wrong side of the car. "This is just like the clip!"

And the bullets weren't having any effect, but there were still injured people in the cars crashed around them. Misato was too focused on the thing and whether she was going to have to leave the other people and run to make sure Shinji survived, so she didn't notice someone floating down next to them, surrounded by a blue aura.

The white-haired man wearing a labcoat over a rather eccentric red-and-black shirt with an ruffled collar landed, his aura disappearing, then snapped his fingers.

The bottom part of the …thing exploded.

"What?" Misato spun around, noticing the man for the first time. "Did you destroy it?" she demanded, and Shinji noticed that her eyes were more than a little wild.

"Yes. Was that rude, when you were already fighting it? …I'm sorry, I'm still a little careless when it comes to human customs." He blushed slightly, embarrassed but looking like this happened to him a lot. "I'm afraid that Dubhe and Megrez's ability to cause earthquakes would be troublesome for the geofront. Are you intact, Lonely One?" he asked Shinji.

"Human customs?" Misato raised her gun again, at the man. "Are you an angel?"

"There is no being in existence that can answer the question of what they are, but I was told by the Shining One that if asked that, I should always answer no. However, apparently if asked if I am a god I should answer yes, even if my existence does not strictly rely on the definition of God," he explained helpfully, although the two of them found it anything but. "Oh! I was also told to give people these if they asked any of the difficult existential questions," he remembered, reaching into a pocket for his cards. He handed one to Shinji and walked around the front of the car to hand one to Misato, not bothered at all by the gun. When he moved Shinji saw his legs and noticed that he was extremely thin.

_Dr. Al Saiduq, Astrophysicist. Consultant to JPs, Administrator of Nicaea & Akasha._

_Kind of a space cadet, but he means well. If lost, please call Vice-Director Hiro Kageyama at…_

"That's the number of the Diet Building," although Misato didn't recognize the extension.

He nodded. "Yes. Hiro is in charge of the Tokyo-1 branch of JPs. Although that is a secret, along with the Hotsuin Clan itself, I do not believe the Shining One would want it kept secret from the Lonely One."

"JPs… You're with the people that beat the other angel?" Misato vaguely remembered hearing his name from Ritsuko. He was very strange, but Misato had met a lot of strange people over the years. Second Impact did a number on a lot of people's mental balance.

"Yes." Al Saiduq nodded happily. "They are my friends." Pale eyes closed as he smiled. "Human friendship is a truly wonderful thing," he said, and vanished.

Before Misato and Shinji could stop staring at the empty space, he reappeared. "The Shining One informed me that it is more polite to at least attempt to explain these things at the beginning. I erased Dubhe and will also have to erase Megrez myself before their earthquakes can destroy this city, but Polaris and I are fighting for control of the Akashic Record, which contains the data making up all of existence: past, present and future. Since I was created incapable of harming my creator and he is being helped by his successor Eli, his victory is currently inevitable. My position as administrator is an aberration only made possible by the Shining One, so I must again rely on the human ability to alter the history recorded in the Akashic Record. Lonely One, you are the expression of the will of humanity in its struggle against the beings known as angels. Now that Dubhe has appeared, the Nicaea summoning app will be available for your download, and it will be available to others when Merak arrives. Tico A and Tico B will explain the app, but it is your choice whether or not to accept the power that I hope will allow you to change your fate.

"Since there are multiple existences humanity gives the definition of 'angels,' I shall call the one Misaki Izuna fought before 'shito,' since that is the term NERV uses, is it not? They are the children of Adam, the being responsible for seeding all worlds in the multiverse with life, who creates new worlds for those who have Reason. He is also called Kewkab or Kagatsuhi. Those called 'tenshi' are the servants of Eli, also called YHVH. The King of Bel will allow full access to the power of Babel for the Devil Summoning Program when the first of them attack." He looked at them, covering his mouth and looking embarrassed again as he thought of what else to say. "I hope that was not too confusing, and that Nicaea and the summoning app are useful to you, Lonely One," he said, and vanished again.

"What… was… that all about?" Misato asked, trying to sort it out. Too much information at once. 'Shito' and 'Tenshi' and what was Dubhe? Polaris she knew, Polaris was the North Star, and Kagatsuhi was the god of fire, but…

Shinji just shrugged, but after watching Misato die in the clip, and coming so close to failing to do anything to keep it from happening the same way? He was already logging onto Nicaea to download the app.

"I've been expecting you, Master Shinji," Tico said, bowing. "His Excellency authorized use of the summon app for you and those in your Fate Viewer. However, before beginning the download, I am required to ask you the following question: Do you want to live?"

Shinji didn't answer right away because honestly, that was a good question. What interest did he having in living to begin with? His father didn't want him, and the people he'd lived with had thrown him out as soon as his father wanted him to go somewhere. Misato worked for his father, so she'd only taken him in because NERV wanted him there for the Eva. The kids at school, well, they were in his class and that was really it.

But the clip of Misato and those other people dying played behind his eyes again, and before Misato could ask why Shinji was hesitating, what it meant that wanting to live was an of course, he said, "I guess." If he was dead, he wouldn't have any chance to stop people from dying, even if people he'd just met.

* * *

"-after that angel was defeated by a concerned citizen, another arrived outside Tokyo-3, where-"

* * *

"While I cannot approve of Polaris choosing to exterminate humanity for harming his pride in his work, it is not my place to interfere in his quest to regain the Throne of Heaven in the age it is appointed to him," the purple-haired woman said, orange robes fluttering around her. "However, your master, Child of Kewkab, seeks only to use the power of humanity, the free will of God's children, to alter fate and take the Throne of Heaven from his rightful successor regardless of how many humans die in the process." Her eyes closed, mourning those who had already perished. But Second Impact was caused by human hands, so there was nothing that could be done. "To even be willing to destroy their immortal souls in the process of absorbing them into himself… Return to the lower realms, messenger of a deposed creator, or I, Remiel, shall smite thee."

The blue cube's response was to charge up its laser. The Priestess Amane regained her body from the angel Remiel long enough to summon, "Laksmi, Oh benevolent goddess, descend and protect us with your kindness." Her voice was still calm, but far less ethereal when she was the one who spoke.

Her prayer was answered, and the goddess' spell shielded them from the blast.

Remiel sighed. "Perhaps I truly am soft, to offer you mercy even though I knew you would reject it, would not turn from the course your creator placed you on. Yet is it not God's will that I offer mercy, when I am the Mercy of God?" He reached Amane's hands up to the heavens. "I call down the Thunder of God!"

Power far greater than all the electricity generated in Japan crashed down on the angel Ramiel, who let out an unearthly scream and perished, quenching the steaming glass that once had been a mountain with a torrent of LCL.

"I am afraid that this is all the direct aid I may offer humanity, Amane," the angel told her inside her mind. "Once again, they have reached for the corrupting power of demons. The purpose of God's Thunder is to destroy armies that seek to march on heaven, and when humanity itself may become part of such an army? Another Ordeal has begun, so soon after the last, I'm afraid. I may offer you council, and fulfill my duty as the one who watches over the One Who Resurrects, but I am subordinate to Metatron, and he was displeased by how much aid I gave humanity during the last Ordeal. Sariel and others believe that we should have conquered humanity and removed their free will during the last Ordeal. After all, if humanity did not have that power Polaris would not have been deposed and Kewkab would not seek to depose him as well. They argue that this proves that humans are a threat to order." And that was true: Remiel knew that well after all these ages watching over God's eldest grandson. Watching him seek revenge for God manipulating him into murdering his little brother. Even though Cain knew that God had done this for the good of humanity, so that they would have a murderer and martyr as examples to dissuade them from sinning, he could not forgive a plan that involved the death of his beloved kinsman.

For Cain to spend thousands of years trying to defend humanity, his nieces and nephews, and gain revenge by defeating and deposing an all-knowing God, for his brother's sake? It seemed impossible, but had not the human Hiro Kageyama, incarnation of another son of Adam, deposed Polaris when he sought to erase the world and replaced him with one of Polaris' servants who had rebelled against him by helping mankind?

Was this proof that God had erred in giving humanity free will? Created a race more born of chaos than the demons themselves? Yet how could God err?

The mysteries of God were not for men nor angels to know, Remiel knew. All he could do was have faith that there was a good enough explanation for God enabling Abel's murder, Polaris' deletion of the human world and Second Impact.

* * *

_Look up the lyrics of Ode to Joy sometime. The gist of it is that life contains great stuff, and anyone 'who has had the luck to be the friend of one who was their friend as well,' should experience great joy. "And a friend loyal unto death." Power of Friendship, but also why Kaworu might think that Shinji would be fine, since to have had someone who made the effort to be his friend is more important to the death part. _

_With the fate viewer, Alcor is more obviously pro-Power of Friendship. There's a line that seems to say that the septentriones had kind of a hive mind that Alcor was kicked out of for disagreeing with Polaris about the value of humanity. His title before you find out either of his names is "the Anguished One," both because of this and because he's worried that Polaris is destroying humanity because all the things Alcor did to help humans, like giving us fire, are why Polaris disapproves of our development. _

_'Suha,' an Arabic name for Alcor, means the Lonely/Neglected One, so he would empathize a lot with Shinji._ _While Kaworu smiles most of the time, Alcor is sad unless one manages to cheer him up, usually by treating him like an ordinary person. Since the MC of Devil Survivor 2 has quite a lot of friends, who is reaching out to who gets reversed. _

_Also, Alcor is not quite certain why everyone is so sad when he dies in most endings or becomes one with the universe in a way that means he will no longer be able to interact with humans (and probably isn't conscious of himself as an individual) anymore, so that the new world will be one that is inherantly biased towards humans instead of either not giving a damn about us or actively being a jerk. _

_This is post an Alcor Route Perfect Ending, in my head, where the MC figured out what he had planned in time, said, "You are not allowed to do that," and then Ronaldo and Yamato got brought back to life along with the rest of the world. Hey, Yamato said, "In the next life," and then he died, so it's the next life._


	3. The One who Resurrects

_Naoya put quite good security on his summoning program. The Nicaea summon app, on the other hand, runs on cell phones. Remember Naoya's FML expression in Atsuro's route when Atsuro wanted him to let the DSP run on other hardware and operating systems without compromising security and resulting in a hackable demon army? While Naoya's devil summoning program is powered by internet drama (Seriously. Naoya is a genius. And a troll.) and thus will work for anyone, the summoning app and Nicaea can only be used by those with some spiritual power of their own. Still, it's pretty close to certain Gendo would be able to use it given the strength of his emotions. I wonder what demon his obsession with Yui would call… Off the top of my head, Izanagi or Orpheus seem appropriate, given the whole '(failed) quest to recover dead wife/husband' thing. And those are protagonist demons. _

* * *

"Another pattern blue?" Another?

They were already diverging so wildly from the prophecies, but to Gendo this meant opportunity.

Another of his minions, one of the two male ones whose names he'd never bothered to remember pulled up the overhead image of the angel on the holodeck in front of the command pyramid. Correction: Angel_s_.

That actually looked something like angels.

More of them appeared, red, blue and yellow wings flashing into existence to surround a white-haired man in a black and green robe, who stood facing a grey angel with a spear.

"I'm patching in one of the street cameras."

"Aaaah ah," the grey angel intoned sonorously, and closer up they could see that it looked as though its grey flesh was rotting; a disfigured and monstrous being.

* * *

"Oh?" Dr. Minageshi drawled, in a way that showed he was only a hair's breadth away from outright laughter. "Why don't you try it, then? I'll tear you to shreds and rip out your blackened souls, you accursed angels!"

"He _does_ know that the longer he spends trash-talking Anael, the more backup he's going to call, right?" Whoever said that was probably standing under the street camera.

"Well, it is Naoya: that's probably half the reason he's doing it." Ritsuko and Gendo recognized the voice of Dr. Atsuro Kihara. "Hey, you're the one that said that he'd better leave some for you."

Whoever this was said "Damn right I did, but I'm not standing around here while he gets all the fun."

Kihara sounded alarmed. "Wait, hold on Kaido: I don't know if he reactivated the civilian summon accounts on the comps yet!"

"Well, let's find out. Harmonizer's on, and I don't need the comp's power to summon one of my contracts, remember? Hey, Pazuzu! Get down here, we've got some angel ass to kick!"

"Pazuzu?" Fuyutsuki said, surprised. Rei had only summoned minor folkloric spirits, and this Kaido could call on the demon king of the winds? It seemed he could, as a winged man with the head of a lion appeared beside the rough-looking man who strode towards the gathering flock of angels.

"Tadashi," a female voice said with a tone of fond, familiar, barely-scolding. "Well, it looks like it's time, Mr. Kresnik." A woman in a coat that looked more like a doctor's or nurse's than a scientist's ran forward for a moment until she was beside Kaido, a warrior who wore a very different white coat appearing beside her.

"Wait up, Miss Mari!" Dr. Kihara called, then corrected himself. "Mrs. Mari… Never going to get used to that."

Some of the angels turned and saw them , making more of the sounds Anael was, that sounded more like intoning sounds or singing than like words. Kaido laughed. "Eliminate us? You tried that before, remember? Come get some!" Kaido beckoned like the arrogant punk he was.

"Have fun slaughtering these self-righteous fools, but Anael is _mine_," Naoya warned them. "I'll make him realize he should have stayed dead!"

"Not if I get him first, old-timer!" Kaido declared, raising his fists as angels flew towards him and his wife.

"Raising a hand against my brother," Naoya said darkly as liquid darkness bubbled up out of the ground next to him, resolving itself into something like a humanoid ink blot, featureless, with arms, tentacles all black except for a golden crown. "And then daring to show your face in front of me: Nyarlathotep!" Tentacles lashed out to ensnare the disfigured, corrupted angel. "He killed you too quickly… Loki, keep the other vermin off my back while I teach this slave his place!"

"Sure." A purple-suited man with an untrustworthy-sounding voice, a little too smooth appeared behind Naoya. "This looks like it's going to be quite the show."

"Pay attention, Loki: Just because I defeated you and took your contract doesn't mean I've forgotten what you dared to do," Naoya said, a purple glow gathering between his hands as he lifted off the ground and floated towards the struggling angel, held aloft by the power that coursed through him. Anael's spear could cut through the tentacles but not make them stay cut. "Think of this as a demonstration: Megidolaon!" The light blasted out from between his hands, engulfing Anael and two more of the nearest angels as well as Naoya, the abomination and the god that had come to his call. When the light faded, Naoya and his allies were intact, Anael's struggles had weakened and the other angels were gone. "The power of the almighty: how does it feel to have it turned on you, Anael? How does it feel to know that you spineless angels will never be loved by him the way we humans are? For all your groveling, all your sacrifices, will never be enough. Just like mine weren't," Naoya said with cruel triumph, releasing that light yet again.

Megido: Har-Megido, the source of the word Armageddon.

Contemptuous red eyes regarded Anael as it fell to the ground, no longer able to struggle against the grasp of the tentacles enough to stay aloft. "You're just an angel, not one of his true children: he created you unable to measure up. He created you angels, made you to adore him, made you unable to stop adoring him more than anything else no matter how much he hurt you. When he already knew that he would never love you in return: isn't that what you believe, that _he _is all-knowing, had all his cruelties planned out in advance? What he wanted was someone he had to _make _bow down, surrender their free will to him, not those unable to challenge his dominion, ones he couldn't have the pleasure of grinding down into the dirt like he's tried to do to humanity! And you can't give him that, can you, any more than I could give him the innocent blood he craved! You know you've become a monster, Anael! Angels can't deceive, so the monstrous visage you bear: that's what you've become, tormenting us to please him! Pride, jealousy, wrath, _sadism_: you and all your kind have devoted themselves to evil in the name of his domination!" Again.

"Hey, heal please?" Loki asked.

"Why do you think I summoned you?" Naoya asked, tone indicating that this really should be a rhetorical question. "Not for the pleasure of fighting beside you in battle: I just wanted to see you suffer the indignity of being beaten up by these vermin. Haven't you figured out by now that I don't tolerate gods toying with my younger brother for their amusement? I'll heal you after they've beaten you into a bloody pulp, so they can do it again."

Loki sneered and flickered out for a moment, four of him popping into existence around the battlefield a moment later.

"Now, where were we?" Naoya asked the broken-winged angel. "Ah, yes. You angels and your hypocrisy. Metatron said that we humans would be free of _him _and his interference after the last ordeal! And now you've come sneaking back into _our _world to plague us again: why? It's not that I'm fool enough to trust _him,_ I learned _that _lesson long ago, but I would have thought that your arrogant pride would have held you back from losing face. Yet here you are, crawling back to humanity after forswearing us so publically, claiming we weren't worthy of his attention." Naoya snorted: _that _for God and his attention. His handsome face was cold and arrogant enough now to be a prince's looking down at some dirty peasant that thought it was worthy to be in his presence, and then had the gall to beg for mercy on top of that. "There's only one thing that he values more than his pride: his power. Not us, and certainly not _you_."

Anael's next half-song, half moan contained a little more fierceness, but Naoya only laughed. "Law? He doesn't even know the meaning of the word. The demons of chaos care more for _law_ than he does. The only order YHVH cares about are the orders he gives other people. At least the Great Darkness has a code, and the law in his domain is the same for everyone: the weak are ruled by the strong. Simple. Fair. Even Lucifer is willing to yield to one greater without complaining about it." Naoya frowned at the memory.

"God, on the other hand, is capricious. He'll do whatever suits his latest whim and claim it's justice solely because it's him doing it, and he's the one who holds Heaven's Throne. But he's not the first to hold it, won't be the last and now he might not ever have held it at all. Isn't that wonderful? The knowledge that not only one day will YHVH himself be no more important to the order of the worlds than Okuninushi and several dozen other creator gods I could name, but you will be counted among all the other demons! Just one more power _beneath _humanity. Not the ultimate 'good,' but known to all as the force of ignorant darkness, superstitious fear and oppression you truly are! Will you deny the truth, or will you finally see your master for what he really is? And _that _Anael, is why you deny me. That is why you break the Word of God to come into my brother's world, _our _home ground even knowing the fate that awaits you. Because you'll do anything to deny the true nature of the one you serve! To avoid facing the fact that vile slavery is your lot in existence, and it was the one you adore who did this to you! The reason you truly hate us is that we have the power to turn away from him! To truly be free of him! Kewkab bound his servants to return to him, Polaris bound them not to attack him, but Eli: he made you _love _him. You _poor, pitiful _thing, you. He didn't just make you lick his boots, he made you worms _like_ crawling in the muck at his feet as he ordained for you." Despite the faux sympathy of his words, Naoya's voice was cruel and pitiless as he readied the killing blow. "Go, and remind your brothers and sisters that this is _our _world, humanity's world, and you scum are not welcome!"

"Man, Naoya, you made me feel sorry for him," Atsuro said, after dispatching one of the last angels between him and his teacher with a flurry of punches.

"Don't waste your sympathy on angels: they don't have any for us. Nikaido: how is your end of things coming along?" Naoya asked Pazuzu's summoner as Nyarlathotep dragged down and tore apart an angel that came too close to the doctor.

"Hey, don't worry, it was your brother who showed us where the Shomonkai comp factory was. Just because we couldn't use them for awhile didn't mean I was going to throw away something like that. I knew you'd let us break 'em out at some point, when the damn government or the damn angels crossed the line again." Kaido spat. "So, can we start handing them out?"

Another blast of that light took out one of the two remaining groups of lesser angels. "Handing them out?" Naoya knew better than that.

Kaido grinned like a shark as his fists and Pazuzu's winds finished off the last of them. "Don't miss a trick, do you? Just like old times. Yeah, that Azuma guy had the right idea. We're doing them enough of a favor just selling them the comps in the first place. Sucks that I can't figure out how to remove that protection from these ones, but hey, I don't need my demons to beat down anyone who thinks having a comp's enough to take on the head of the Shibuya Daemons."

"You'll have some competition: the summon app's freeware, but since nothing's really free it extracts a cost from the user. It's useless to anyone without enough inherent magic not just to summon a demon and make a contract with it the old fashioned way, but powering it entirely with their own emotions and will, not even using a sacrifice like most rituals."

"Like me and Pazuzu?" Kaido asked, indicating the king of the winds with an offhand shrug of his head.

"And your woman and her vampire slayer. I'm sure you know how few people are capable of that sort of will. The UN Forces have requested the old JPs program, but it's too slow to use in combat unless your name happens to be Fumi Kanno." The creator of the program. "Mine has an external power supply that doesn't depend on the user, so you'll still have a near-monopoly."

"Nice," Kaido said appreciatively. "How much do I owe you for not licensing out the design to anyone else?" Because of course there was a catch.

"Oh, I'll already get what I want out of this." Naoya smirked at him. "Just spread the power of demons."

"Wait, are you talking about why the Shomonkai had Azuma distribute the comps?" Atsuro asked, looking like he was on the verge of protesting. "Naoya…"

"Atsuro." Shut your mouth and think.

Kaido figured out what they were talking about. "Oh, right. The failed contracts. Well, that's what happens if someone weak gets their hands on any kind of power." Sucked to be them. "Anyway, looks like we're out of small fry to kill. I'm going to head back to Shibuya, give my guys the heads-up. Later."

"Bye, Kaido. See you, Miss Mari."

"Just Mari's fine," she told him. "Take care of yourself, Atsuro," the black-haired summoner said as her demon vanished. "And say hello to Yuzu for me."

"You'll probably see her before I do, she's hanging out in Omotesando with Gin and Haru and I'm stuck going to meetings in Tokyo-2."

"Explaining things to politicians." Tsk. Naoya shook his head. "Such a waste of your potential, Atsuro."

"Well, at least they're not bowing down to the angels like last time, right?" Atsuro said, defending his efforts. "Oh, hey, Naoya, I was wondering if you could help me with…"

"Dinner," Naoya interrupted, dismissing his demons as well and dropping to the ground. "Students get hints about their programming problems for free. Government lackeys get charged for consultations. But, since it's you, let's just make it dinner." The scientist started walking, wooden sandals clacking on the pavement and Atsuro hurried to catch up. "I'm thinking Indian."

"And vegetarian, right. I found a pretty good place in Tokyo-2…"

* * *

"Why are you watching two people argue about where to eat while the sirens are on?" Misato asked, and all of them jumped, wondering when she'd gotten here. Shinji too, it seemed. "Is the situation over?"

"It seems that way," Fuyutsuki said. Gendo just held his fingers together thoughtfully. "Unless we get a fourth angel attack today."

* * *

Kaji fired a rapid three shots at the _thing _that had popped out of his comp. With everyone in the shelters, he'd figured this was a good time to make some noise. He'd figured that something would happen when his father said he'd need to shoot something, but what the hell was this white… catish… thing?

The inspector was surprised enough when it showed up that the thing had gotten a free hit at him, only to stare at its claws and ask, "What? I thought humans were supposed to be soft and squishy, not hard!" Since Kaji didn't even have a bruise from something that should have sliced his gun arm open, he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So this was what NERV and SEELE were going insane about. The technology that let humans have an AT field without the Eva. And if a small floating cat-thing could take two bullets to the face before dying, then what would happen to a human who got shot at? Kaji wasn't going to experiment with that on himself, but it was a good thing to keep in mind.

"Well, you beat me, so now I guess I have to serve you," it said when it vanished.

"Kabuso, huh. So that's what it was," Kaji said thoughtfully, after opening up the comp again and poking around in it some. "Looks like it's not going to tell me any more until I get in another fight." He'd see what Ritsuko had to say about the one he'd gotten for NERV before he let her know he'd already gotten his own and 'formed a contract' by beating one of these things. "Well, it wasn't all that tough," he told himself. Sure, two headshots meant it was a lot tougher than any human would ever be according to the guys who taught Kaji and the other agents to handle a gun, but they weren't playing by the normal rules any more than the angels were, huh.

"Interesting."


	4. Summoner Clan

_Yamato's zodiac sign is Gemini: he was originally supposed to have a twin who would take his place if he was killed off. Miyako is in the artbook. I would make a comment about evil twins, but I don't think it's necessary._

* * *

Fuyutsuki, Gendo and Ritsuko: all of them had become experts in occult lore. Without direct access to the Secret Dead Sea scrolls, they'd had to spend a lot of time searching through the apocrypha for whatever nuggets of truth the mystic tradition influenced by the prophecies of the scrolls still contained.

"Lilith was created by God, so that doesn't narrow the field much. He could be the child of any angel or fallen angel. That would explain the red eyes." Ritsuko made a note to have the Magi run a search for knowledge demons. "A lot of them were also worshipped as gods in other pantheons." Or gods of other pantheons were labeled demons by the new religion: the same thing Naoya said would happen to Anael and YHVH in turn.

"He can't be a nephilim, there haven't been any of them since the flood. According to anecdotal evidence, of course," the ex-professor amended that statement. "That leaves half-demons, like Merlin, or…"

"Or," Gendo said thoughtfully. "He could be a True Successor." He'd specifically identified himself as human, after all.

"A real son of Adam?" Unlike the debased descendants of Lilith, who lay with animals and demons? That narrowed it down, didn't it. "He did say that he wasn't able to provide innocent blood." Which would make him the farmer, not the herdsman with lambs to sacrifice.

Gendo was surprised Fuyutsuki had caught that too. "The only problem with that theory is that he's had several thorough background checks performed on him over the years. He was accepting programming jobs when he was fourteen, and had a few projects involving serious risk of loss of company reputation if he failed before he was sixteen. We can be almost certain that he was born at the hospital his records say he was, and he's aged since then. That doesn't fit an immortal wanderer." Would an immortal really risk the amount of public acclaim Dr. Minegeshi had? "The one who cultivated the earth…" When the Qin solution restored soil fertility? "This wouldn't be the first time the commonly known Biblical text has been wrong: I've ordered another background check," and he would also have Kaji track down this 'Tadashi Kaido' of the 'Shibuya Daemons' to purchase comps for his own men.

While this technology was a threat to SEELE, since it rendered the Evas useless and would make people wonder why they insisted on building enough of them for the ritual, it was better for him if Yui could be sealed away for now, safe and sound. With this power, Gendo wouldn't need SEELE _or _his son.

"Misato wants answers about Dr. Saiduq," Ritsuko reminded them. The card lay in the middle of the bare, black surface of Gendo's desk.

"Kewkab bound his servants to return to him, Polaris bound his not to attack him," Fuyutsuki quoted, and Gendo wondered how many times Fuyutsuki had gone over the tape to notice those words among the sounds of battle, humans casting spells and angels screaming.

"His background didn't hold up beyond the past few years." It hadn't taken the Magi more than a few seconds to determine that, "Someone in the Japanese government put his identity together." If Ritsuko had ever bothered to think about him besides that he was smart, odd and absolutely oblivious to advances even from blonde geniuses, she would have said that of course he wasn't Arabic but not really thought anything of it. Second Impact made a lot of people unhinged. Misato's indigo hair dye and usual choice in clothing had become proper attire for military officers in _the _most important military position in the world, for example. It was generally assumed that most people had a few screws knocked loose, and it hit the smarter ones harder because scientists faced reality instead of recoiling from it. Their ability to understand things meant they could understand how bad it really was instead of sheltering behind ignorance and denial from the sheer weight of all that loss and human suffering. Billions of people. Billions dead. A kind man, bright, the only survivor of a large family (according to his records): no wonder he was so thin, so pale. Some people ate when they despaired, some lost the will to eat.

Many covered loneliness and loss up with smiles and friendliness. All of his oddities became perfectly natural, in the assumed context.

Well, she knew what they said about assumptions.

Fuyutsuki pushed back hair that he knew was half-grey by now, only a tint left of his old brown. "Well, the Akashic Records are sometimes treated as the same thing as the Collective Unconscious, but Akasha means space."

"Not exactly," Gendo corrected Yui's old professor. "Remember, translations into English especially were often filtered through the prejudices or lack of prejudices of the translators. Just like kami and god aren't quite the same. Akasha is a more rational translation, but the term we use for the space beyond this world, a space where beings that know all exist, is heaven. The Akashic Record could be the Holy Sophia, or the Tree of Wisdom. But the 'Administrator of Akasha,' would be the Ruler of Heaven."

Not just a kami, but Kami-_sama_. The being that knew all, past, present and future, and oversaw all of existence. That would indeed effectively make him God.

And wouldn't that put the cat among the pigeons, those old coots of SEELE, when they figured this out? Al Saiduq was just a slight mistranscription of Al Saidak, The Test, another name for the star Alcor. Multilingual riddles confused by mistranscriptions were among the least of the difficulties encountered when studying ancient alchemic and mystic texts: this was child's play for Gendo Ikari. Called the Lifespan Star in Japan (and if he was allied with JPs, a Japanese mystic agency, then might there not be some truth in this country's myths?), it wasn't _quite _one of the stars of the Big Dipper, the constellation that pointed to Polaris as it sat at the top of the heavens, but it was right next to them. The overlooked one, the shadow servant that overthrew its master to become ruler of the heavens above?

So who was this Hiro Kageyama, to refer to a being like that with such proprietary familiarity? Who joked about an all-knowing being getting lost and needing to be returned to its owner?

What if it too was a false name? Than that was an easy riddle to solve. Hiro was often used because of its similarity to the English word hero, brave and fearless warriors who battled evil. Kageyama. Mountain's Shadow, but with different Kanji, Yama was the god of death.

_Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil_.

_Because I am the most dangerous thing in that valley, and all those evils are scared of _me_._

Gendo had chosen a fig leaf, symbolizing the first attempt to cover something up, when Adam and Eve had disobeyed and lied to God, combined with the words this hinted to be a lie: "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.' He might as well have named it, 'Biblical Cover-ups Inc.' And/or given himself the title, 'Lying tempter-in-chief.' He got away with it because most people were idiots. With Yui gone, it was one of his few joys in life.

So who was this guy who boasted that he could defeat anything, even death? Not to mention someone who seemed to boss around a god, from Misato's testimony. A god he'd overthrown Polaris to put in place? The power behind the throne, the way he was the Vice-Director of JPs?

And the Hotsuin were only _one _of the Four Great Summoner Clans? And the smallest, considered cripplingly overspecialized because of their reliance on the Dragon Stream, which limited their true power to certain areas and meant they needed far more infrastructure than the other clans? The plans for Tokyo-3 _had _gone through JPs for approval, and they'd made some alterations. Not that many, but then Gendo had already designed them with basic principles in mind…

Yamato Hotsuin, that _bastard_! He hadn't been interested in taking Tokyo-3 because this way he could make _Gendo _find the money to pay for constructing the city in a way that would be useful to _him_, if he ever needed to take it over or protect it.

So this was how people felt dealing with _him_.

* * *

"So, nice place you have here," Kaji said, as Miyako Hotsuin – Yamato's twin sister, apparently, groomed to manage the natural areas that seeded the Dragon Stream's power as Yamato was groomed to manage JPs & the application of the Dragon Stream to Japan's defense – served tea to her guest.

"It's been in the family for centuries," she said calmly, silver hair pulled back by an ebony clip adorned with a golden dragon. "Of course, the clan isn't as large as it used to be. Yamato and I were in entirely separate buildings, growing up, and of course we each had our own staff, and tutors."

"It seems like a pretty lively place now." He hadn't seen this many kids running around anywhere but an elementary school playground since Second Impact.

She smiled. "Yes. Yuzuru Akie and his new wife were the first to move in, and when Yamato was finally willing to return here instead of staying at the mansion in the city all the time, his aide Makoto and her husband came with him. Keita came here often to train on our property, and eventually the guest room simply became his room. Daichi and Io started living here after college, and there's Hiro of course. Hinako Kujou and Airi Ban aren't in residence most of the time: they're usually on tour, and of course Jungo has his chawanmushi business in the city." Miyako smiled. "This is a clan compound after all: they were meant for a large, extended family. I'm still rather cross with my brother for not calling me into the city when Polaris struck. Of course, he knew that the two of us would not see eye-to-eye." Not about the World of Merit: dealing with the environment had made Miyako painfully aware that the world was run by stupid people and in the aftermath of Second Impact, that stupidity was likely to kill them all. About letting her domain be erased in the first place and not killing Polaris for it. "Still, I'm glad that I've had the chance to get to know them all."

"Them all?" Kaji asked, wondering why she was talking to him like he was one of the family.

"Well, Hiro's family too, of course: Abel's told me so much about you." She pronounced the name 'A Bel' instead of 'Able.'

Kaji blinked. "Abel?" Wait, that did sound familiar. "Dyed his hair, always wore headphones?"

"Yes, he's Hiro's older brother." Hadn't Kaji known that? "I've met your father, of course, but this is my first time meeting you."

So that was why Honda had told Kaji to introduce himself as Honda's son. Kaji wanted to curse his old man, but it made sense. What if SEELE or NERV had hauled him in? And if they found out the connection now, SEELE would assume he'd known at least _something _that would have saved them a lot of surprise and embarrassment & withheld the information from them. He'd be in so, so much trouble. "Man, I haven't seen him since I was a kid. Him and that Yoohoo lady and her boyfriend with the funny hat." Took him way back to right after the surgery. Waking up to find out that he'd been declared dead for a bit and they were going to be moving to Germany for awhile, although at the time he'd just been glad his Dad could make it and he'd brought a lot of people with him. "And the lady with all the costumes who made that James Bond costume for me, because of my dad…" Yeah, Kaji's future profession had been set in stone then.

"That's Midori," Miyako knew, steel-grey eyes smiling. "She does that to everyone. My brother still scowls if you say Sephiroth in his hearing."

"Oh?" He did want to hear about that, but first he wanted to know, "What do you know about Second Impact?"

"Not all that much besides what everyone does. All the older members of the clan died that day: Yamato and I were too young to be bound to the Dragon Stream. It was made to hold back the power of the stars: if the meteorite hit Tokyo it wouldn't have been much of a problem, but holding back a wall of water?" She shook her head. "The two of us were bound to it right away afterwards, before the N2 attack, although the barriers are more than capable of holding off a fusion bomb without a Hotsuin. That and old fission weapons are half of what they were designed for."

"So you never investigated it?"

"No." She looked surprised by the question. "At least I didn't. We were too young, and even once we were able to take on more and more of our duties, we had the damage done by years of neglect to repair. Our ancestors paid attention to events outside our borders and the advance of technology and foreign gods so we could use their power, so Yamato might have." As head of JPs.

"I don't know if your barriers could have done anything if you had one there." But if they might have, and SEELE hadn't looked, hadn't tried? Kaji took a chance and said, "It wasn't a meteor."

Miyako Hotsuin put down her teacup, and the transition from traditional cultured Japanese noblewoman to… what? Demon summoner? Someone trained from birth to be a soldier, a samurai, a weapon for the country's defense? "I think you should start at the beginning."

And tell her _everything._

Or else.

* * *

"The administrator of Nicaea really showed up himself?" Kensuke asked, looking at the card and adjusting his glasses. Not only showed up, but took out an angel single-handed, one that would have killed Misato? "I'll see what I can dig up on this guy and JPs." If this summon app would let them do stuff like that?

"Yeah, I owe him," Touji agreed. For his sister, and a bunch of his dad's buddies.

"I'm just glad you're alright, Shinji," Hikari said. "Shinji?"

Their new classmate was staring at the door with an amazed expression on his face. "Who is that?" he breathed.

Hikari turned around to look. "Oh, that's Ayanami. I don't think she's come to class since you arrived. She wouldn't give out her phone number and she's not on anyone's fate viewer." That second was what had made Hikari give up. If Ayanami was that determined not to make friends, that she hadn't started caring about anyone here at all after all this time? There was nothing they could do even if they had her number.

"She's… she's amazing."

"Whoa," Touji said, eyes widening. "She looks, I don't know, different somehow."

"Or maybe I just never looked at her properly," Kensuke agreed, lead on Nicaea utterly forgotten as the business card fell out of a lax hand. "Ayanami… Rei…"

Touji had already gotten up from his chair and joined the students clustering around Rei. "Hey, uh, can I carry your bag?"

"It is not necessary." Rei was only a few meters from her desk.

"Wow, Ayanami, how did you get your hair like that? It's so much more beautiful than the sky…" one of the girls said with a sigh.

Rei pushed her way through the crowd to her desk and sat there attempting to ignore them.

"What happened to everyone?" Hikari asked, although it wasn't 'everyone' she was looking at but Touji.

Shinji had flipped open his cell phone. "Femme Lilith…"

"What?" Hikari grabbed his cell. Shinji transferred his gaze from it to Ayanami without complaint. "This is… something that lets you analyze people and angels? Temptation? Unique additional auto skill? So I press _this_… Charm, affects all men, fifty percent chance of affecting women and demons?"

"Mother's Love... She looks like a mother, doesn't she? I bet she'd be a really good one," Shinji sighed.

Horaki kept fiddling with Shinji's phone. "So where do I go to… Ah _ha_, close out of this, and here's where you can set… That would be resistance, but if it's a hundred percent chance resistance wouldn't help. This would ban it, but only once… Oh, here. Null auto."

Shinji suddenly jerked out of his dreamy reverie.

"Now I just need to do the rest of the class," Hikari said, once again looking at Touji. "Including me, since even though I didn't get affected this time, there's still a fifty-fifty chance of it happening next time. Right."

"Wait, are you talking about turning on everyone else's summon apps? Not here!" Shinji warned her. "They'll wreck the classroom!"

"What are you talking about?" Hikari asked.

"Well…" Shinji took his phone back and called up a screen with pictures of different creatures. "When I downloaded the app there was something about 'Survivor Awards,' so I think the admin gave me points or… something…"

The possible awards said things like, 'Asuka's Confidant: Raise Asuka's Fate to Stage 5.' Who was Asuka? And Stage 5 was best friends: Shinji had barely ever had _a _friend, there was no way he could get someone else to rely on him _that _much. Some of the ones he actually had were, 'Challenger: Returned to the desolated world with Asuka,' and 'Child: Remained in the fantasy world with Gendo.' A fantasy world? A fantasy of what, a world where Gendo was a good father, he still had his mother and lots of friends?

"Anyway, that's how I got these two demons, with the points." Lord Nan Dou, god of the Southern Dipper, and Ammut, the devourer of souls who weren't good enough in life.

"Demons?" Hikari asked.

Shinji nodded. "The other one, Obariyon? When I activated the app…"

* * *

_Yep, Shinji is on NGplus, after the anime's Gainax ending with the dream of them being ordinary friends & the movies' ending where he wakes up with Asuka. He doesn't remember the other lives/playthroughs/reboots, though. _


	5. If These Things Remain Unchanged

_Edited to add a freaking fight scene, many thanks to a review. D'oh._

_The Gigajama tactic is one of the things recommended for the Lucifer battle in DeSu1, but personally, tyrant demons. And maybe Okuninushi paired with a tyrant, if you're in Overclocked. You want to push his turns back so he can't megidoladyne your ass too many times. If the attacks he uses on you during the actual battle do too much damage for your healers to keep up with, then you need to level (send Abel out solo, the random battles are quicker and there's a lot more leaked XP that way). A demon's turn spent on Gigajama is one not spent on holy dance, holy strike (again, if you're in Overclocked) or anything that will murder him before the death from above arrives. _

_And have someone with Nyarlathotep (Vile demon - not sure if he's Overclocked-only) positioned to kill the Abbadons, so they don't keep attacking your other characters from outside their ranges & juggling them. You want to push back _Lucifer's _turns, not let his minions push back yours. Just keep in mind that Lucifer himself is a Tyrant... _

* * *

"Shinji!"

He sighed. So close to getting out the door… "Yes, Misato?"

"Is your cell phone fully charged?"

"Yes, Misato."

"And you've got your gun?"

"Yes, Misato."

There was a pause. He inched closer to the door. "Are you _sure _you don't want me to drive you to school?" she asked finally.

"Yes, Misato," Shinji said, with slight desperation instead of irritation.

"You'd rather risk running into demons than let me drive you?"

_Yes_. So yes. "You know they attack cars," he reminded her. "I'm safer on foot." Really.

Asuka's door slammed open. "If _he's _walking, than I'm walking," the redhead declared, hand on her hip. "I'm the one who knows how to fight around here!" And she was spoiling for one.

The German pilot had prepared for years for the day she'd come to Tokyo-3 as a warrior, a future hero. Instead, they'd shipped her Eva here and put it into storage, sending her with it almost as an afterthought, and the only person who cared enough to take her in was Misato, even though NERV's operations commander didn't have the time, when she was so busy studying the tactics of Captain Izuna's special operations team and training NERV's new demon tamer force.

Misato finally stuck her head out of the bathroom, towel still wrapped around her head, to give them a look that said that she really _should _insist on driving them, but come to think of it, Asuka could use the combat practice. NERV's need for target practice meant patrols of Tokyo-3's streets that should have taken out most of the big ones, and Misato didn't have the time to accompany them on foot just in case they ran into something.

Nor could Misato drive safely, when her defensive… well, when her driving skills were the only reason she could still use a car to commute to NERV. It was true, the demons _were_ targeting cars, and she'd slammed Shinji around a few times since there hadn't been time to give him a warning before she had to take evasive action. So no wonder he didn't want to be driven anywhere by her.

"If anything happens, we'll outrun them," Shinji reassured her. If he'd been outside, he would have summoned up Ammut to prove it to her. Now that he knew what all the different skills were, he thought he'd made a pretty good choice, picking a Wilder and a Deity. Lord Nan Dou's Awakening meant that Shinji and his demons could blast the hell out of anything that caught up to the Devourer of Souls. It used up a lot of their spiritual power, but since Shinji was trying to _avoid _battles he'd never been in danger of running out yet.

Hikari had gotten the student council's authorization to form some sort of special committee to keep demons from attacking and interrupting classes by patrolling school grounds. Shinji had agreed mostly because it meant he got to hang out on the roof and listen to music a couple periods a day instead of being stuck in class all the time, but the reason they'd wanted him, that he had such powerful demons, meant that he was kept in reserve. Both so that if anything powerful showed up, he'd have the power left to handle it, and because Touji, Kensuke and the others wanted to beat more powerful demons so they could get them in the Auction.

For some reason, everyone but Shinji had to defeat a demon first before that demon was willing to be sold to them. So everyone kept asking Shinji to buy demons in the auction for them, and to come with them to do things after school in case they needed his help, which was… A weird way to be kind of popular. He hadn't realized this was popularity until Touji pointed out that what else was Shinji going to call people trying to suck up to him like that?

"But it's not really about me, is it?" was all Shinji had to say to that. "I mean, I don't really understand why I have these demons, or the Occult-level account." On the Devil Auction site.

"Well, it would be the same thing if you were popular because you're an Eva pilot," Kensuke pointed out. "At least this isn't because of your Dad."

Touji snorted at the reference to Gendo, and Hikari had also looked disapproving. Shinji had somehow ended up talking about what happened with his dad, during one of the periods on patrol with nothing to do, and it was kind of nice. It wasn't like they'd liked Gendo Ikari before, not when their parents were NERV employees and everyone knew that Ikari Sr. was a bastard, but having people be upset on his behalf… he guessed that was what friends were.

Remembering that, he found himself keeping his phone open even after he got outside and summoned his demons, tabbing over to the Fate Viewer. Level three, all three of them, just like Misato.

He remembered Touji's hand tightening on his shoulder, almost like he wanted to make a fist, when he'd been nosy enough to look over Shinij's shoulder at his fate viewer and see that his level with _his own damn father _was zero.

"Come on, get moving!" Asuka ordered.

The plan had been to leave early this morning not just to avoid Misato's offer of a ride, but to avoid Asuka. After Hikari told her that the Special Extracurricular Execution Squad had a minimum level requirement, she'd been after Shinji to spend all of his time spotting her while she trained. Asuka insisted she didn't want his help, but she wasn't dumb enough to go fight demons without backup, and having someone with a high level there meant she could go into the outskirts of the city and try to find tougher demons.

Shinji had managed to escape from her yesterday afternoon because Touji had gotten up in Asuka's face about how they _already had plans_ and she wasn't invited if she was going to be such a bitch to his buddy.

"Where do you go to train?" she asked him, tapping her foot.

"I don't," he told her, shrugging. "I get enough practice at school, with SEES." A lot of demons hadn't gotten the memo that because of the fallout from Third Impact, children were usually tougher than adults now. Everyone at Shinji's school could use Nicaea except for most of the teachers, but they still got attacks every couple of hours or so. "Hikari's already got set up another training trip Sunday: did you get the permission slip signed?" He hadn't seen her talk to Misato about it.

"My legal guardians are in Germany, you idiot."

Yeah, way to remind Asuka that Kaji already left. It probably didn't help that she was a college graduate, and a _real _Eva pilot who had actually fought an angel, unlike Shinji who had mostly sat there and been tested on so far, and she still had to get signed permission slips? "I mean, Misato's signature counted for me...Oh, right."

"So I can get her to sign this? Asuka asked, pulling it out of her bookbag.

"Maybe not," Shinji replied, remembering the awkwardness as he kept walking, even though since Asuka stopped he really should stop to talk to her. "There actually was... Our homeroom teacher doesn't care what we do, but the teacher who oversees the student council wasn't sure if it was okay to take Misato's or not, even if I was living with her. But she works for my father, so Kensuke rattled off a lot of stuff about military regs and dependants until he agreed that counted." Even though Shinji was pretty sure it didn't. "Do your stepparents work for NERV Germany?" He hoped she'd say no, because reminding that advisor of the excuse they'd used to get Shinji in? If the school decided to contact his father, Shinji was absolutely certain that he would say no. Not because he was afraid for Shinji, battling demons a maximum of three hours a day in a supervised setting, but because if Shinji died (well, died permanently), then he wouldn't be able to use Shinji for whatever he was trying to find, with all those endless tests that involved Shinji just sitting there, instead of actually learning to pilot.

At least he could take his headphones in there, but even with all the orchestral military soundtracks Kensuke downloaded for him it was pretty damn boring. The music just made it worse, really: it was all very exciting music and just rubbed it in that he was in a giant robot and yet he was just sitting there instead of doing anything that would actually be an appropriate soundtrack for, or anything a giant robot was meant to be used for.

"Will I need a permission slip to join SEES?"

Dumb question, Asuka's grimace acknowledged when she saw Shinji's startled look.

"It's a school activity and we get to skip class." Which was another reason Asuka wanted to join, after suffering through their homeroom teacher's boring off-topic lectures while Shinji got to sunbathe on the roof.

"That's one thing, but _field trips... _I don't want to send paperwork to them for every little thing."

Shinji sympathized. "I was ready really early, so, I guess..." If she just needed to get up to the minimum level requirement, and then she could go off on her own? She'd probably insist on it.

"You _guess_?"

Opening his phone, Shinji suddenly found himself reminded of when Hikari made him lunch, just to say thanks for the day before, when he'd made lunches for the team. "You really don't know how to handle someone doing you a favor, do you?" he said under his breath, remembering how Hikari said that and Touji laughed, even though he'd looked a little jealous.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Tico?"

"Yes, Master Shinji?"

"Is there somewhere we could find a fight that won't take more than thirty minutes, or so? For Asuka to solo." So not too tough: this Tico would know Asuka's level, she had the same one.

Tico helpfully pulled up the map of Tokyo-3. "There are concentrations of demons at these three locations: two of them are gatherings of weaker demons that should be a reasonable exercise for Master Sohryu, but a demon of unusual power has appeared here."

"A demon of unusual power?" Shinji repeated, horribly certain how this was going to go.

"We are directing all app users, including the NERV tamer teams, to avoid the demon's location until a Devil Summoner arrives."

"Devil Summoner?" Asuka asked.

"Unfortunately, due to an ongoing operation none of the JPs staff can be dispatched to deal with the demon, so..."

"What about him?"

"What?" Was she saying that _he _should handle it?

"Didn't you hear him? They're directing app users, but what about the people who can't use this thing?" Adults trying to get to their jobs on time in an increasingly dangerous city. "You are an Eva pilot, aren't you?"

"Do I count if they've never actually let me pilot?" Shinji wondered. "And they're sending someone to-"

"I can't believe... Don't you have any idea about how Evas work, you idiot! You _are _that thing's pilot, and they'd have to recalibrate the core before anyone else could use it! You're a waste of Misato's space, a waste of an Eva... If you're not going to use those powerful demons, then transfer them to someone who will!"

Transferring demons was possible: that was how Shinji bought demons for the others, but, "You have to be part of my team for that. And you can't take them with you if you leave my team." All of SEES was registered as Shinji's underlings, not Hikari's, because not only did they get access to an occult-level account that way, they could borrow from the cracked skills he had for some reason. At first he thought it was just that the site had given them to him because he was the Lonely One, but Tico said they were already in his file and there were some things checking the Record wouldn't help, then bowed and politely refused to say more.

As Asuka opened her mouth, someone shouted, "Get out of the way!" seconds before tearing past them on a motorcycle. Shinji and Asuka were on the sidewalk, but the street was full of enough debris and bits of trashed car that hadn't been cleared out yet that a lot of bikers were using the sidewalk.

"What does he..."

"Pedestrians are supposed to stay to the right," Shinji said, grabbing Asuka's arm as he watched the man's back retreat ahead of them, one of those creepy winged little girls called Moushvu or something flying beside him. "Must have gotten a..." Death clip. Shinji looked down at his phone. "If you don't remember the way to school, ask the Tico," he told her.

She ran after him, of course. He'd known that she would, but he had, "Ammut!" The swiftness the Devourer of Souls' power lent to his feet should be enough to keep her from keeping up with him. It wasn't that far at all, but far enough that he should have safely lost her by the time...

Actually, all she'd have to do was follow the screams. "Lord Nan Dou!" Shinji called as the scattered pieces of the motorcycle continued to smoulder where it crashed when the demon pulled its rider from his seat.

Demoness, he noted absently, as the rider - a policeman, Shinji belatedly noticed - called, "Get out of here, kid!" He was kicking at the demoness, but it wasn't doing any good, judging from the smile on that pale face under that broad-brimmed black hat as she turned to Shinji.

The man Lord Nan Dou's spell called back to life wasn't running, just shaking and sobbing, but Shinji had expected that. Shinji thought he might be another policeman, but with his uniform ripped off like that, the remnants soaked with blood, there was no way to tell.

"Ammut, deathbound!" Shinji ordered, intending to hit her away from her captive and the victim, but she didn't budge. As the wind she summoned buffeted him, he called up his app's analysis function. "Phys Drain, did I get them mixed up again?" Phys Drain meant that she would absorb attacks and add them to her strength, but Pierce was supposed to make sure they connected anyway. Unless it was Phys Drain Pierce didn't work on, instead of Phys Repel? "A unique race skill?" Those were always dangerous. Morrigan, instead of Affection or...

"Another young warrior, so eager to fling himself into battle for the sake of others..." Scathach mused. "This one's far more _rugged_," and yet it was the policeman she flung aside, floating towards Shinji. "And yet there's just something about you that makes it so I just can't _wait _to see you broken."

_Damn_, Ice Dance wouldn't work either, so Ammut was useless right now! It could drain her strength to replace its own, but that would do a pitiful amount of damage.

"Will you try to take refuge in battle madness to save you from the true madness, _my _madness?" she wondered, slipping right past his demons to trace her nails down his chest. Even though it felt like she wasn't applying a lot of pressure, he didn't need to look at the app to know that she'd just ripped more than half of his life away from him. "It won't help. Nothing will. Will you try to drown yourself in drink, or other women, to forget my touch? Yes, an earnest boy, after the last one I broke. He had such _sweet _cruelty in him, that boy who tortured animals when he couldn't have other humans." The Avatar of War smiled, a pleasant, fanged reminiscence. "Yes, Shinji Ikari: when war comes for you, you cannot refuse. Be murdered in your bed, or submit to me in mi-"

"Gigajama!" Now! Before she finished that statement!

It might already be enough to count, but that _was _a forgetfulness spell, and when it was cast on her by another god? He might not be doomed to either let himself be... bile rose in Shinji's throat as he realized that might be what had happened to the other policeman. Was what why the biker had looked so desperate, warning Shinji to get out of there?

What kind of courage did it take, to watch a friend get _raped to death_ and ride _towards _the demon that was going to do it?

"Ammut, drain! Keep hitting her with gigajama!" If she couldn't remember her powers, she couldn't murder him with them. There wasn't time enough for him to have Lord Nan Dou cast Enlightenment to raise the power of their spells. Shinji was just glad she wasn't immune to thunder: ziodyne wasn't as good as ice dance, but at least he could do _some _damage to her.

Now that she'd said that, if it counted, then since he wasn't going to stop fighting and let her do _that _to him he was doomed to die in the next battle he fought, and his demons were demons: once he wasn't in condition to give orders anymore, they were free to go. He could have one of his friends revive him, but they weren't here. She'd definitely do worse than kill the cops before they checked the app to find he was dead and revived them, and then they'd have to get back here.

"Force dance!" the policeman ordered, standing over his fallen friend, and Shinji wished he could send a heal spell his way, seeing the dark stain on the arm where she'd grabbed him, but Lord Nan Dou's prayer with its limited range was the only healing spell Shinji had thought he would need, so he hadn't set any on himself. In theory, he could dismiss Ammut and call up something else, but even though he could summon all of his friends' demons since they were in a common pool, he couldn't summon ones they were already using and he didn't know what skills the other demons had. Hikari was the one who organized all that, and he hadn't _needed _other demons before.

Force dance wasn't a good thing to use: Shinji didn't need to check his app to see that she was probably strong to it, since she'd cast a wind spell on him, but that might be the best spell that man's demon had. Were policemen even _allowed _to be demon tamers? Surely if the man had any skills set, he would have used something by now.

All they could do was chip away at her, and with every spell he cast Shinji was _sure _that something was going to go wrong, that she would manage to hurt them enough that he'd have to order the god to heal them, and that meant not replacing the forget spell on her, and she might finish them off before the healing spell worked. Some of the stronger demons got stronger as they neared death too (Shinji was too frantic to wonder how he knew that).

The way nothing _did _go wrong was almost scarier than the earlier attack. Until his cell phone beeped and he read the e-mail saying that she was now unlocked for fusion, he was absolutely certain that she was going to survive somehow.

He might summon a god himself, but Lord Nan Dou looked more like, well, an ancient Chinese bureaucrat or something. Wasn't their heaven kind of like a bureaucracy? It wasn't the same as reading that skill's description, and then tabbing into the Compendium to read that anyone who turned down the Morrigan's advances died, and anyone who did let her take them off to war was never the same again...

He kept staring down at his phone, and _really_, was Nicaea just going to let him summon something like that? What if it got loose! Until the demons got their hands on phones and comps and started summoning each other, most of the rogue demons in the early days had come from failed contracts, when a demon murdered a first-time summoner. What if this demon-goddess got loose? Again!

Something like that... Using something like that, even to survive himself...

He barely heard the motorcycle cop coaxing the other one up to lean on his shoulder, and the man had to put a hand on Shinji's shoulder (Shinji jumped back) before Shinji could acknowledge his thanks in a shaky voice.

As he watched them walk in the direction of the nearest clear road so they could get a ride to the hospital, he remembered that wasn't there supposed to be someone with him? The only time he'd ever fought a battle alone was when he made his first contract. Except he was glad Hikari hadn't seen that, and what if she'd chosen Touji or Kensuke instead of him...

"There you are!" wasn't all Asuka said when he found her, but he was too busy trying not to shake to pay attention to anything else. He hadn't run away. He wished he could have, but the cops would have moved too slowly.

There was an 'ahem' from Shinji's cell phone. "Forgive my interruption, Master Shinji."

"That's fine," Shinji told Tico. Actually, it was a relief, just like Asuka demanding that he tell her what happened. It was good to hear another human voice, even if the Ticos were just really advanced AI. Or magical AI, or something. "What is it?"

"My apologies, but beginning two hours from now, the Death Clip service will no longer be available."

Shinji paled. "What? Why?" There hadn't been a death clip of him yet, but Touji's dad's job, and Hikari had almost gotten overpowered twice now, escorting the buses that brought in the kids that lived further away along with the preschool kids.

"For the same reason we were forced to suspend service last time." Tico looked aside. "The death clips are made possible because of our master's connection to the Akashic Records…" Looking as though he'd made up his mind, the program's avatar bowed.

That made Shinji's eyes widen: both of them were respectful of all the summoners, especially the male Tico, but this looked… more so.

"I'm sure he wouldn't want to burden you with this, Master Shinji, and it's a violation of the terms and conditions since he isn't on your fate viewer, but…"

"What is it?"

"It is unfair to burden you with this, but… May I have your permission to show you a death clip, Master Shinji?"

Me? Shinji wondered at that, but he still said, "Sure."

* * *

The man from before, who had saved Misato and said he was the site's administrator. He was standing on the deck of a ship somewhere – clearly a military vessel, although unlike Kensuke, Shinji had no idea what kind it was. From the sound of Asuka's indrawn breath, he wondered if she knew it?

Or had she noticed that the man was levitating almost a meter above the deck to avoid the way it pitched wildly about, waves breaking all around them despite the absence of a storm. Everyone else on the deck was wearing storm gear and clinging tight to the safety lines spread about that area of the deck.

Asuka muttered something: Shinji didn't understand the first word, but, "Engel?" sounded enough like angel that he recognized it. They'd run into one on the way here that she'd taken out, according to Misato.

"They're down too deep for any of the new armaments," a woman with the bearing of an officer reported.

"Dammit!" someone short whose head was covered by the hood of the storm gear said, punching a steel bulkhead out of sheer frustration. After a little experience with the summon app, it didn't surprise Shinji when it was the bulkhead that got dented, not the man's hand.

"Megrez came up after me last time: if it weren't for those damn angels…" another man said, pushing back his hood to reveal surprisingly normal black hair. Then he sighed. "Now I'm sounding like my cousin. Are the Kuzunoha having any luck finding more gods or something that can handle that depth?"

"They've already unsealed Amatsu-Mikaboshi," the blue-haired woman said, once again sounding like she was given a report, "but the Yatagarasu won't authorize its use, not this close to the fault lines."

"I meant anything that _wouldn't _entirely defeat the purpose, Makoto," the unhooded man corrected her. "I've read those reports too: if the power of the stars triggers an earthquake here, it doesn't matter if it's Megrez or Mikaboshi, does it?"

"Sorry, sir."

"They won't, not in the next fifty-three seconds," Dr. Saiduq told him, sounding apologetic. "Megrez has given up trying to get past the servants of the Lesser Tetragrammaton in order to reach you, Shining One. He has turned his attention to the fault lines."

The dark-haired man frowned, but said nothing.

"If you use either of the other options to destroy Megrez along with the servants of Eli that guard it, you will trigger an earthquake and tidal wave that will devastate China as well as the land of Yamato," Dr. Saiduq reminded him. "Since you are conducting an operation here, they will hold your government and JPs responsible, will they not. So he must be destroyed in a manner that doesn't cause collateral damage."

The Shining One sighed. "I thought I told you not to worry about that stuff… I know. I'm out of ideas. After all these years, I just hate the thought of accepting the inevitable. Not even once. It might be fine for you," he said, holding up his hand to forestall an objection he knew was coming, "but it's because we fought the inevitable that this planet's still here. So I can't give up on making the impossible possible. But, Alcor."

"Yes, Shining One?"

"If you have to, then thank you," he said, and smiled in a way that was carefree enough that even Shinji could tell it was a hundred percent fake. "We do appreciate it. All you've done for us." Even if they didn't _want _him to do this for them.

"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way, Hiro?" Makoto suggested, but from her frown she was grasping at straws. "The problem isn't Saiduq destroying Megrez, the problem is that Polaris will use that moment to attack him, isn't it? Maybe Fumi can some up with some way to protect his files with the seals?"

"Yamato had her look into that after last time. We can shield 'hard reality' data, but Akashic core data? Before Megrez calls up enough power, so in the next…" Hiro looked at his cell phone. His eyes widened with realization. "Keita, Makoto, back up." Hiro stayed where he was.

"I'll demanifest, so no void appears in the location of this body once it is deleted," Alcor assured him. "Thank you, Shining One. For everything."

"He just had to say that," the short man, Keita, raged when Al Saiduq disappeared. "That… How could you basically _ask _him to die to protect us! I didn't ask for that!"

"Because he was going to do it anyway, and if he dies to save us because we couldn't save ourselves, then we _are _responsible, whether we wanted it to happen or not, _Keita_." Hiro didn't look like he was any happier about this than Keita was, writing an e-mail on his phone.

"I know, my dad, shut up." Keita punched the bulkhead again.

"Alcor's suffered enough because he decided to protect us from Polaris. Even if it is next to nothing, the least we can do is let him know it's appreciated…" Shit, Hiro's expression said, clear as day. "Nicaea's down."

"What? It kept working last time," Makoto said, shifting her weight as the boat buckled under them.

"Because this time Polaris actually bothered to go and look up where in the Akashic Record Alcor hid it, probably. After last time, he'll know that even if he can check the Record and see that it's impossible for us to win, that's subject to change." Hiro's phone chimed, announcing the arrival of an e-mail. "Aaand we're up and running on Babel." Quickly punching in a number, he said, "Fumi? Three to go ashore."

"Aye-aye, Vice-Director. Director Hotsuin's already activated the Towers."

Hiro let out a sigh. "Good. I can't believe I just said that," he added bitterly, "but good."

The three remaining on the deck vanished as the waves gradually subsided.

* * *

All Shinji could do was stare at the screen.

It was Asuka that said what he was thinking. Well, half of what he was thinking. "Why are you showing _him_ this?"

"There may be nothing you can do, Master Shinji," Tico said. "But, if there is anything… The administrator of Nicaea is our creator, and it was the Shining One who saved him on the previous occasion Nicaea's services were needed. The Shining One is no longer the vessel of the Will of the Species. He's prevented other death clips before, so this may not come to pass, but even though humans have a strange ability to affect the Akashic Record, Polaris is the former administrator, and Alcor's creator. If no human changes fate, then this future will come to pass. Once Polaris replaces Alcor as administrator of the Akashic Record…" Tico hesitated. "Master Sohryu? You might consider calling your stepmother and telling her to remain within a ten kilometer radius of NERV Germany for the foreseeable future."

"Why?" she asked sharply.

"I am specifically forbidden to divulge that information. My apologies." He bowed, the avatar's hand on its chest. "But if you do not, I am certain that you will regret it, Master Sohryu."

"If Nicaea goes down, what happens to everyone at school?" Shinji asked. "We won't lose our demons, will we?" How was he supposed to do anything about what he'd just seen? He had _a _flying demon, but even if he got Tico to use his phone's GPS to give him directions, how was he supposed to fight deep enough bombs wouldn't work down there?

But even if this happened after everyone was at school, and they could call NERV reinforcements, what if it happened while everyone was getting home?

"Our demon summoning service will continue to operate on the server Babel," Tico assured him. "However, our death clips require access to the Akashic Record. As you are the Lonely One, Master Shinji, you and your comrades will be given access to the Laplace Mail, but since it operates via calculation of the future instead of accessing future data, as a practical matter it is not possible to make it available to the general user, aside from the Death Clock function."

"Death Clock?"

"That function is only available to those using the Babel server for their demon summoning. Forgive me for hoping that I never have to explain its details to you, Master Shinji." Because if that happened, the programmer who created the Ticos would already be dead, Shinji realized.

But what was he supposed to do… "The Evas," he realized. There was something he could do. Maybe? Turning to look at Asuka, he asked, "Can't we… don't they have AT fields? Wouldn't that protect us from the pressure?"

Asuka looked at him with an eyebrow raised, clearly thinking that okay, maybe he wasn't a complete cowardly waste of space, waste of powerful demons _and _his post as an Eva pilot after all. Still, training kept her from saying that of _course _her Eva could, even if she wasn't sure about Shinji's inferior testing model. What it was was, "Worth a shot."

"If _he'll _authorize it…" But Misato was reasonable. "Come on," Shinji told her, bracing a foot on top of one of Ammut's knees to climb onto the crocodile demon's back. "I'll have to give directions, can you call Hikari and let her know they'll need someone to cover my shifts today?" If they were lucky.

"Of course," Asuka said, finding herself a something-resembling-comfortable seat on that scaly back. Okay, maybe she was starting to get some idea of why a wuss who didn't like getting to fight demons was Horaki's third-in-command. Better than that brainless Suzuhara or the fanboy, anyway. At least he was responsible.

If they were going to fight... "Asuka? Would you mind setting recarm?" Maybe they could fight something weak on the way to NERV, weak enough that if Scathach's curse really had taken, Asuka could finish them off after they killed him, then bring him back to life.

* * *

_Occult-level accounts in dBay are protagonists, as a mythology gag. _

_Evas operating at that depth would involve power source and other problems, but I can totally see Gendo offering their services to JPs in order to make _them_ solve the magitechnical issues involved. Free upgrades for Yui!_

_Depending on who dies in Devil Survivor 2, you can get a scene that reveals that Keita's dad wasn't actually killed by loan sharks, but died saving Keita from the earthquake at the beginning of the game - apparently Keita didn't know this either, until a friend of his father's told him. I haven't personally gotten this scene because I can't stand letting Jungo die. _

_In Devil Survivor 2, they make a lot of use of gods the Hotsuin clan sealed away for a rainy day (It's not Crazy Prepared when this. Is. Megaten! In fact, it's barely enough) - I made a reference in the first chapter to, 'Io is standing by,' since Io Nitta has a very high-level ability to channel divine power. Judging from the boss battle against her (in some routes, provided you save her life - she's not in favor of rewriting human free will, utopia or no utopia), she can use the power of Lugh not just to fight herself & aid in the manifestation of huge eldritch-abomination-munching dragons, but to buff small armies. And she'd only have gotten better at it in the years since. _

_Amatsu-Mikaboshi is a being from Japanese mythology that is prettymuch right out of Lovecraft. Being a star (sort of...) makes him similar to the septentriones, too. In Devil Summoner RK 2, it's revealed that the Kuzunoha Clan has him sealed away, and it is possible, with a lot of work, to undo that seal just in case things ever get bad enough that doing so is even in option. The trope is Godzilla Threshold. Having this many high-level entities trying to wipe out humanity at once, though? That'll do it._

_The Hotsuin and Kuzunoha are two of the Four Great Summoner Clans, so it's reasonable that Yamato would use them as backup when he's not, you know, intending to use what's going on as an opportunity to rewrite humanity's instincts. Sadly, the current Raidou Kuzunoha would be the jerkass who time travels and is a boss in Devil Summoner RK 1, so he/she won't be showing up as a character. Gouto might, though. He'll still be pissed at Naoya for helping the Shomonkai cult kill the previous Raidou, who presumably wasn't a disgrace to the name._


	6. Who Art In Heaven?

_This chapter's new, and I went back to Ch. 5 to add a fight scene, even if it wasn't the one I originally intended. Thanks to a couple reviews, I'm going to try to go back and get a few more scenes out of Shinjimuse, who wants to avoid scenes with the nakama in order to avoid the inevitable moment when they start acting like jerks and/or die. He's very suspicious of the nice things._

_Also, when I see SEES, I think apple pie truffles – they're a candy company that lets you pack custom boxes. _

* * *

The car racing towards them from Tokyo-1 seemed almost like something Misato would drive, and _drove _almost like Misato was driving lately, except for the siren on the top. Not built-in, but like the one plainclothes officers put on top of their cars when they broke cover and chased after someone.

Shinji watched it, while Misato just gave it a glance and continued watching the sky, hand shading her eyes. Where was the air transport for the Evas they'd been promised? NERV as well as the nearby JSDF forces had been warned to expect a large aircraft, so they didn't shoot it down, but if she had busted her ass to get these ready for pickup in eight minutes and they were kept waiting…

As soon as the white sports car stopped, the driver was out and heading towards them, not quite running but walking fast enough his coat flared out behind him. "Fantastic," he said, looking over the Evas in their carriers and the giant spools of metal cable. "You're Colonel Katsuragi?"

"Yes. Vice-Director Kageyama?" she said, noting the silver piping on his black uniform and the differences between his JPs insignia and the standard one.

"Hiro's fine. Is this where I should summon the transport?" He asked, looking around them. "Looks like there'll be enough room, not that I'll be summoning it at full size…"

"Summon? You're transporting it on a demon?"

"Know how demons are about cars? They're _much _worse about planes and helicopters," Hiro told her, pushing back his hood (clearly bad weather gear) to look at Misato with bright blue eyes. "Especially septentriones and angels – tenshi angels, and we're dealing with both. Hopefully, anyway. Humans daring to _fly? _They'd be on a cargo plane like Yamato on tak-" He coughed. "But they'll think twice before challenging a powerful demon, even if it is carrying cargo. As long as the Evas are fastened securely, it shouldn't be a problem. I've used Pengie for construction materials, boats and ATVs, so he's used to it."

Pengie? "Summon away," Misato said, waving at the field.

He nodded, getting his phone out of a pocket and flipping it open with a well-practiced gesture. "Da Peng!"

"A flying fish? I thought the trouble was that you didn't have enough powerful demons that can do subaquatic combat." Misato still waved forward the crews, who after the past few weeks were used enough to demons that some of them had already started towards the great fish, as it laid two of its great golden fins down on the ground so they could wheel on the Evas' carriers.

"A flying _freshwater _fish," Hiro said apologetically. "Well, fresh water and fresh air, I guess. I haven't even been able to test what depth he's rated for because salt is something people use to _make _wards against demons. No one's got a spell that wards a demon _from _salt, and Miyako had the other clans hit their archives. There are lots of demons it doesn't bother, but Pengie's not one of them."

"Pengie's his nickname?"

"One of his nicknames," Hiro said, going with her as she led him and Shinji towards one of the buildings, out of the way of the work crews.

"One of?"

"Well, you see, most demons are sentient," he said, leaning against the sheet metal wall of the hanger she'd led them into, for the sake of getting out of the eternal summer sun. "And/or pretty disgusting. So one that's a _fish_, and _not _sentient, and _huge_… Keita dubbed it the Emergency Food Supply."

"Eating a… demon?" Misato said skeptically. From her knowledge of mythology, that rarely turned out well. Mermaids, for example, were Russian roulette.

"If people are hungry enough, they'll eat anything," the Vice-Director said, with a smile that did reach his eyes and still seemed a little sad.

"You don't need to tell me that, I used to be in the UN military." She'd been to plenty of places that were still devastated after Second Impact. They used to sow land with salt to make it infertile, to devastate a country too much for it to recover and fight back, she recalled from stories of ancient times. Second Impact had done that on a massive scale. The Qin anti-LCL solution got rid of that disgusting stuff, but it couldn't do anything about the perfectly natural salt left behind by the massive tsunami.

Was there a connection?

He nodded. "We've been accumulating food stockpiles of our own for years now, JPs has, so we don't have to seize the stockpiles meant to feed the public in order to make sure that we can continue to fight, but it's still a relief." Oh, right. "I take it you're Shinji Ikari?" he said, smiling down at the boy.

"Yes, sir."

"No need for that, just call me Hiro," he told Shinji, holding out his hand. "According to Colonel Katsuragi-"

"Misato," she corrected him.

"Misato, then, you're the one who suggested this?"

Shinji nodded, blushing a little. There was something about this man, but unlike the times he'd bumped into Rei at NERV when he didn't have Null Auto set, it wasn't strong enough to keep Shinji from noticing that this Hiro was especially charming, and that it might not just be natural charm or even practiced charm, like Kaji.

"I'm Asuka Langley Sohryu, the Second Child and pilot of Unit 03," the redhead said, stepping between the two of them. Shinji was grateful that she'd intercepted that handshake before he could take it.

He really didn't think there was anything malicious to it, but that presence was a little frightening because of just how inviting it was, to a boy who lost his mother and was abandoned by his father. This feeling, which should have meant comfort and safety, had never ended well for him.

"Nice to meet you, Asuka. I'm Hiro Kageyama, Vice-Director of JPs. I think I'm a Colonel now too, for when we deal with the JSDF." Since they were listing titles. He still smiled for her, and Asuka still smiled back. "I heard from Captain Izuna about the angel you took down. One of the shito, wasn't it? I'm glad that the Evas are capable of fighting the battles they were built for, and at sea on top of that. That's a good sign."

"I make my own luck," Asuka told him.

That got her another smile, and a sidelong glance as though the two of them were sharing a joke. "My thoughts exactly." More seriously, he added, "Just don't take too many risks down there, alright? The two of you are younger than Airi was, and there's already enough grey hair in the family."

While Asuka was divided between being polite to the adult and giving the person who had just insulted her battle prowess a piece of her mind, Hiro's phone rang. With an apologetic nod at them, he said, "Hey, Miyako… No, the time estimate on the death clip has been pushed back, but we don't _want _it prevented yet, remember? The Big Pink Thing and the others are still watching the Record, and if they find out it's been changed so that he survives, they'll pass the word on to Where Naoya Gets It From. Coming through dramatically at the last possible moment is actually practical this time." He listened for awhile, then laughed and said, "Isn't it the _evil _twin who's supposed to kill and replace the _good _twin? And we both know that what I _meant_ was, 'you can kill him if he does it again,' not 'if it happens again.' Not that he was the one who _did _it last time, but you know what I mean." It sounded like they both laughed. "The Dragon Stream? Look, unless you need someone to waggle his fingers over it and say 'Shrinky shrinky…' Oh, right. Saiduq?"

"Yes, Shining One?"

"Miyako thought of some more questions she wants to ask you, just in case," Hiro said, tossing Al Saiduq his phone over Shinji's head.

That made Shinji's skin crawl almost as much as someone suddenly being there _right behind him_. Letting go of his cell phone? While outside? Just tossing it to someone so casually, as though he wasn't worried about a demon attacking at all?

"The Pleadic calculations are human technology, not something I provided to the Hotsuin clan, but…"

Hiro said, "Ahem. Classified," and waved at Dr. Saiduq. "Step outside for a minute."

"Oh. If you say so, Shining One." He blinked, but vanished.

"He's still working on the concept of _keeping _information from people," Hiro said with a kind of familiar affection, like talking about the foibles of a kid, or a pet.

"You said she had questions to ask him, 'just in case,'" Misato said. Just in case he died?

"I take it Shinji showed you the death clip?" Hiro asked her.

"Yes." She'd demanded to see it. Those were her Evas, but also her pilots, her wards. And Shinji wanted to go out there to save someone who _definitely _wasn't human? "You really trust him? That much?" Enough to hand over his cell phone, the piece of technology that contained a demon tamer's defense against inhuman creatures. Like Saiduq.

Hiro looked up at the sky, or rather the great fin arching overhead, for a moment. "'I trust him with my life' is the traditional thing to say, but it's an understatement and we're both in the business of taking risks." For the sake of defending Japan, or the world. "So I'll say this: the details are classified, but he _has _been trusted with the fate of the entire world. And I was not disappointed." He met Misato's eyes. "Call Makoto Sato if that doesn't satisfy you, but let's not talk about it now. He's still _here_, just…" Hiro waved offhand at the empty air, "and humans saying that they don't like or trust him depresses him, since it's a little hard for him to _get _that not everyone knows him, and it's reasonable to be cautious if you don't know who he is or what he's done."

"He thinks he's that famous?" Dr. Saiduq was fairly well known in certain circles, but even Misato, who worked for NERV, was only on the edge of those circles.

"No, but he's a being of the Akashic Records who can access all data, for a certain value of data, with a thought, and he's still not certain that we aren't a hive mind," Hiro added. "Which is mostly my fault, come to think of it, since he thought we weren't until all of that happened. He's got some points, and there are a lot of things that people just 'know' even if you leave the Will of the Species out of it. Putting us aside for a minute, the septentriones were, or are except for him, a hive mind, so even though he's experienced being on his own it's not really how he sees things." For that matter, "He might still _be _a hive mind, since Alcor is a binary system, but not enough of one for it to matter."

"So you are admitting that he is not a human, or a demon, but one of the… one of _one _of the, races of beings that's attacking us?" Misato asked, just to nail it down, get it out in the open.

"There's really no use trying to hide it," Hiro said, because duh. "He can't even pass for a demon, he's too little like us. All you have to do is talk to him for two minutes, and it's obvious that either he's an alien or a total fruitcake. With whipped cream," for good measure. "We don't let him out on JPs business without me or Fumi there to run interference, because Makoto's too honest to come up with good explanations on the spot and Yamato just thinks it's funny to watch Alcor act unnatural and everyone else try to tactfully ignore it or come up with reasonable explanations, or pretend they didn't just see that because people don't tell you they'll show you the way to the caterer's table and then _vanish _in the middle of a crowded room, that kind of thing. It is funny," Hiro said, both to be fair and because he did have a sense of humor, "and until now it wasn't a problem because either people would come up with reasonable explanations on their own or just assume he's a demon, if they knew about them, but since we are doing a joint operation, for the sake of full disclosure, yes. He was created as one of the servants of Polaris, and we're fighting his brothers along with the servants of Eli and Kawkab."

"And you're not worried that he'll betray you for their sakes?"

"No." Hiro frowned at her: he'd said that saying things like that would bother Alcor, and she insisted on having this conversation now? Well, at least they weren't talking behind Saiduq's back, and she knew that. "We've gone through this before. Polaris and the others aren't dead because restoring… certain data meant we had to restore _everything _in those files, we couldn't pick and choose, but he's helped us kill them _and _given us valuable strategic advice for… thousands of years, come to think of it. The Hotsuin Clan actually predates the migration to these islands." They had multiple OOPARTS that were that old.

"Restoring files? What could be so important that you brought _angels _back to life, to attack us again?" Misato demanded, hand not on her sidearm but the pocket where she kept her cell.

"The universe," he said, quite simply. "The thing about saving the world is that you can't just save the parts the people you like happen to be standing on."

"The universe." Seriously?

Hiro just gave her a look, as Ritsuko finally got here from whatever Gendo Ikari had her working on to give everything a once-over. Yes. Seriously. Not something to kid about. "It's been almost a decade since then, and they didn't try anything, not even once. Even though Al Saiduq is the administrator now instead of Polaris, they're still beings of the Akashic Record, so all they had to do was look and it was obvious that if they started anything with us again, they weren't going to win. Then Eli got involved – I'm not the expert on him, but even Naoya's still not sure why he did it, or even if he _personally _is behind this. The most powerful of his servants used to be human, so he might still have enough human free will to alter fate enough that Polaris and his servants could win. In human terms, all the septentriones but Alcor are cowards. The way they exist is… For them, it's not _possible _to change what's predestined, there's no way for bravery to let someone win against the odds. So they won't go into a fight unless they see that they win."

"What about Adam, and the _shito_?" because those were the ones Misato cared about the most. The ones who seemed familiar. Even though none of them had taken forms that looked anything like the white giant, they still had a different feel to them than the angels that had wings (or not, like the giant flaming wheels with eyes) or the septentriones.

"Kawkab and his creations? He was sealed at the South Pole. Beyond that, we don't really have much information. We're working on that." After what Kaji told Miyako, although Hiro wasn't going to tell a NERV employee about that, because even if Kaji thought she was trustworthy, she reported to people who weren't. "As far as we can tell, this is an attack of opportunity. Kewkab was deposed as administrator, and we think it wants to use the confusion to regain Heaven's Throne." Or that was what they'd thought, but it didn't explain the significance of what NERV had in the geofront, and then there was Second Impact.

"Another former administrator sleeps in the sun – that one might be Vega. We don't have much information on Vega, because something is so _wrong _about the files from his reign they make Alcor sick, which messes with causality and then we get rains of frogs and energy drinks. When your name means _terror_, though," that was never a good sign.

"Energy drinks?"

"Dr. Otome's – You don't know her, but she's the head of our medical department – Her daughter's a really smart cookie," Hiro said proudly. "Oh, thanks," he said as Al Saiduq appeared beside him and returned his phone. "Don't be nervous," he said when Saiduq vanished again an instant afterwards. "I think she'd prefer you where she can see you anyway. Right?" he asked Misato when Saiduq reappeared, standing slightly behind Hiro but mostly to the side, enough that Hiro had seen him reappear out of the corner of his eye, since he was already looking that way when he took the cell phone. They had rules about Saiduq appearing right where Hiro wasn't looking.

"Right." Hell yes. "Is there some way to tell if he, or one of the others, is there?"

"I am always with the Shining One," Al Saiduq said helpfully. "As for my siblings, they have not… They do not understand the nature of human perception enough to…" he looked at Hiro for help.

"_He _still gets confused about what we can and can't perceive sometimes, and he's been observing us since a little before we became sentient. The other septentriones never bothered to try to understand us, and the whole concept of hiding something is alien to them, remember? The bottom line is, if they intend to make a change in our frame of reference like, say, something that would kill us, they'll manifest in matter that we can detect. It's really all data, and that's how the system works for them. That doesn't mean they can't observe our data without us detecting them, but again, they can't understand human thoughts. They can _look _at what we're thinking all they like, that won't let them actually _read _it. Right?"

Saiduq nodded.

"They can observe physical data, but there's a difference between seeing and understanding. They could see a lot of humans in one place, for example, but they can't tell if that's civilians or an army – they wouldn't even know there's a difference, and they wouldn't bother to try to figure it out. As for Eli's servants, if their master really is all-knowing, he doesn't share much of that data with them, if any. They're much closer to humans - although how close they are to us is up for debate," Hiro looked amused again. "And NERV would know more about Kawkab's spawn than we do. I'd heard the name before, but it was just part of a list of past administrators. Polaris trying to impress me with 'the order of heaven' and how I didn't have a chance in hell of overturning it." Ha. "If they're anything like Polaris and Eli's servants, though, you can count on overconfidence." He looked over at the Evas. "Looks like they're almost done checking that all the cables are secure. If you don't mind, I'd like to get moving as soon as we can."

* * *

The vessel of Adam's soul, SEELE's tame angel.

Whether they made him the new holder of Heaven's Throne and had him remake humanity, or simply used him as a component of the alchemical transformation of humanity into a greater being, which would then take Heaven's Throne for itself, either way he was the key to their transcendence. To becoming something _greater _than worthless humanity, a species incapable of evolving any further, a species only capable of treating each other with animal cruelty, using its intelligence for no greater purpose than to make better weapons to kill each other with.

Until now.

In truth, having him here was a waste of a meeting. His purpose had already been impressed upon him, and there were important matters that they weren't going to discuss in his presence, whether he was asleep or not.

It was still to Lorenz Keel's benefit, every once in awhile, to remind the others of what exactly they were fighting for. What they had achieved, what _Lorenz _had achieved. To impress upon them the holiness of their cause.

Especially when the anniversary of Second Impact arrived, and the world descended into mourning.

The Committee couldn't afford for its members to have any doubts, especially now.

Lorenz knew they wouldn't, though. Not after all these years. It was one thing to make sacrifices for a noble cause, it was another thing altogether for any of them to sacrifice themselves by telling the world the truth and exposing themselves to a maddened beast's wrath and desire for vengeance.

No, using what they'd found in the ancient spacecraft buried in Japan and beneath the Antarctic, as foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the surviving humans would be granted enlightenment, be transformed into ideal beings.

All according to the prophecies, the prophecies these men and countless others sworn to secrecy believed in so fiercely, with so much passion, because the alternative? Why, the alternative would be facing the fact that they were the greatest murderers humanity had ever produced.

Lorenz Keel smiled, but none of them could see it, hidden as they all were behind the black monoliths. Sheltering behind those masks. Because none of them could bear to look at themselves.

Yellow eyes glinted, but none could see them.

In the tube the angel dreamed of blue darkness, of a piano that played the songs that came from humanity's hearts and a woman's voice, wailing for the lost.

So useful, so very useful to have 'the angel' here. Why, who could doubt that it was possible for humanity to become something greater when faced with the avatar of that very hope?

That very, futile, hope.

* * *

_I'm going with the 'Hiro is Seth' thing in this, which would make him as well as Lilith the ancestor of the human race & is why Shinji reacted to him like that. __Obviously I'm going with the MegaTen thing of all myths are true, because people's belief in them will boost 'the truthiness' and people will believe just about anything if it's what 'everyone says.' Hence the power of rumor._

_The administrator that sleeps in the sun is the final boss of Digital Devil Saga 2. Like Polaris, he does the delete the world thing, or rather the planet dissolves into data that streams towards the sun. Before that, he changed the sunlight so that people who went out in it turned into stone, and then he sent the demon virus, which turns people into demons that have to eat human (or demon) flesh or else they go ravenously insane with hunger and turn into _mindless _demons that crave human flesh. _

_Yeeeeeah. _

_I'm debating over whether he's Vega, or Vega is an even nastier entity from Megaten that also has power over reality. Either way, said nastier entity will be showing up in the fic. Like, say, in this chapter._

_Why hello there, Nyarly. I was divided between Lorenz being this game's Kandori (pawn), or having him be like "Jun's father" in Innocent Sin. Currently, Nyarlathotep's ability to screw with human thoughts is like ninety-nine percent sealed, though (and man, is he pissed), so he'd be relying on his ability to interfere directly. And the fact we're all a bunch of idiots, of course._

_After going over P2 and P1 in reverse order, I do think that Philemon's faith in humanity and their ability to grow up/get shit done on their own is his Achilles Heel. Unfortunately, it's likely too much of the aspect of the collective unconscious that he is for him to work around it. In P2 especially, he was playing with _a bad hand_. Such a bad, bad hand. _He let Nyarlathotep deal_, and the party that were the only ones who could save the world were a bunch of people who _ran away from responsibility_ – yes, even Maya, because she could have visited, could have faced that trauma and not traumatized a bunch of even younger kids into thinking they murdered her._

_Alien spacecraft under cities, books of apocalyptic prophecy, humanity (supposedly) getting turned into a better class of being… Of course I had to bring in Persona 2. _


	7. Empty Vessels

_10/20/12 - see previous two chapters for new content._

* * *

The great six-armed naga towered over the assembled UN and JSDF fleet, its many arms whipping the surface of the sea into a frenzy around a giant whirlpool.

So that was the source of the waves in the death clip.

"Careful!" Hiro yelled to be heard over the wind, pulling Shinji back as he leaned over the side of Da Peng, the great flying fish that was carrying them and their Evas. "Don't look down! It's hypnotic, we've lost a lot of tamers that way!" Nothing that fell in there was going to survive. Thank goodness for samarecarm.

"Mein Gott…"

"Yes?"

Asuka ignored Dr. Saiduq to ask, "What _is _that thing?"

"That's Vasuki," Hiro told her, after calling up his app to shield them from the wind so they could hear themselves think. "The dragon that stirs the Sea of Milk, which is part of the processing of reincarnation. The trouble is that the deeper the whirlpool, the more water has to be moved just to keep it from filling in, forget making it deeper." He frowned. "The effort is already making its breath so toxic that if we didn't have teams of goddesses casting Affection or using their Grace, it would have exterminated everything in a hundred-kilometer radius." At first JPs had brought gas masks, but quickly realized that they weren't helping. Exposed skin was all it took at this point: those huge clouds of fog exhaled from that crowned, almost catlike head _burned_ if you didn't have null poison set, eating up a valuable passive skill slot.

All that divine love was pretty expensive, in terms of magical power. So was keeping Vasuki fully manifested like this and constantly using Evil Wave. Normally, the Hotsuin Clan powered massive undertakings like this by plugging them into the Dragon Stream, the great rivers of life-force, but right now they needed to hold that power in reserve. The other three clans were willing to donate some of their reserves, under the circumstances, but the thing was that none of the other three had really planned for the possibility they might need to power big projects like this.

This kind of thing was what the _Hotsuin _were for. Alcor could alter the amount of magnetite, also known as dark matter, in local space so there was plenty for demons to use to manifest, but if Remiel hadn't volunteered to be used as Vasuki's chew toy to keep up a constant flow of angelic blood to power that behemoth, there was no way they would have been able to replace the strength that dragon was using up fast enough. Not that Hiro was going to mention that detail in front of a couple of middle-schoolers. This was too much like powering magic with torture for his taste, and Remiel could talk about penance and reconciliation all it liked, Hiro knew how beings without free will thought, after dealing with Alcor for all these years. It wasn't Remiel's responsibility to make up for his creator's crimes any more than Hiro was going to hold Alcor responsible for Polaris… Even cousin Naoya had looked disgusted by the idea, and that said something. At least tossing all the angels they managed to capture into Vasuki's great maw gave the Angel of God's Mercy some relief, but…

"We were hoping to get Vasuki in range to start picking off the angels so Megrez could break out of the area they've contained it in and get up here so we can kill it instead of setting off earthquakes, but at this rate…" the progress Vasuki made was slowing, and would just keep getting slower. Damn laws of physics: this was why Hiro tried to have as little to do with them as humanly possible.

He hadn't liked this plan from the start, but just like dropping Alioth on Sapporo last time and letting its neurotoxins kill all the survivors in that city, it wasn't like they could give up and no one had been able to think of any better ideas. Not in the limited time they had. Being able to read the future should have let them plan ahead better than this, but when human actions kept changing that future?

"Will we have to fight in that?" Shinji asked, because AT field or no AT field, it didn't look like anything could survive that maelstrom.

"No, they're down deep enough that the water's still calm there." That was the problem. "Megrez has multiple bodies: all of them need to be destroyed around the same time, since if the surviving body has enough time it'll replace the others. If one of you attacks the Northern body and the other goes after the Southern, hopefully the angels will be forced to drop the guard over the one here enough that it can break loose and surface to come after me. This one already has the fewest guards since they keep attacking Vasuki." Of course, when so many angels had samarecarm, and could refill their own magical energy as well? Give them enough time and room to breathe, and they'd revive their fallen cohorts just like Megrez would its multiple bodies.

"Come after you for revenge?" Shinji asked, because from the death clip and the way Hiro talked about Megrez, he knew that they'd fought before. If Hiro hadn't won, he wouldn't be here.

"That too," Hiro agreed. "I might not be the focus of the Will of the Species anymore, but there's enough residual power that they can still sense it. Right?"

"Correct, Shining One," Alcor confirmed. "The Lonely One has barely begun to gather the power of humanity. I do not believe Megrez or the others could possibly have noticed anything odd about his file yet." Not when they had always paid far less heed to humanity than Alcor.

That made Hiro look at Shinji for a moment, before he smiled and said, "Best of both worlds," instead of voicing any worries about how if any of them _did _notice that Shinji had the potential to summon up humanity's power and even overthrow an administrator, they'd move to nip it in the bud while he was still, if Hiro was any judge, very weak. There wasn't any confidence there, none at all. Not even the bloody-minded 'I am going to do this thing because if I don't, people will die, so whether I _can _or not doesn't come into it,' desperation that Hiro had run on more often than he'd let any of the others guess.

But the young tamer had still come up with this, argued with his father and come out here after seeing that clip, just to save someone he'd met once and even if Hiro had made Tico show him the clip he showed Shinji, Shinji couldn't have any idea how much humanity _owed _Alcor. Not at all. He had to have figured out that Alcor wasn't human at all, not even related to them the way demons were, but most people would see that as a reason not to care instead of a reason to pick a fight in a place where a lack of willpower would, as far as Hiro understood this AT field thing, let millions of tons of water crush him like one of the insects Polaris considered humanity.

So he wasn't doing this out of any obligation. Did it even count as, "simple service to their fellow man in their common need," when they weren't talking about a fellow human? Shinji wasn't doing this because he really thought it would work, either, but wasn't courage going in knowing the odds, feeling the fear that was only sane and not letting it stop you?

"You should value your life more," was what Hiro finally said. "Don't ask me why you were chosen: I don't know why _I _was chosen, and Alcor doesn't think it's something he's capable of understanding," so having a being who could access the repository of all knowledge of everything, ever hadn't helped him figure this out, "but humans have free will, so being the focus of the Will of the Species doesn't mean they picked you to do _their _will. It means that three billion people chose you to _make _that choice, the choice that will create the future. It doesn't mean you can't fail: I failed to save a lot of people." Hiro left out the part about managing to bring them all back to life in the end: it wouldn't help to give Shinji a complex or make him think he had an impossible miracle like that to live up to. It was really all Alcor's doing, anyway. Everyone's wills, that let them remember and make it stick. "But there's a choice that _you _are the best person to make. Out of everyone in the entire world, including me. So survive, at least long enough to make it. Alright?"

Shinji clearly had no idea what all of that was all about. Hiro wondered for a moment if this was how Alcor felt most of the time, even if the gap between what he could see and what Shinji could understand was due to Shinji's inexperience instead of fundamental mental and dimensional differences in the worlds they lived in.

Well, hopefully it would make sense to Shinji when he reached the point where he needed to know these things. "Just… look after your friends, and have faith in people. Even if people seem shallow enough that you could step in them without getting wet, they always have hidden depths, and if people act like jerks, there's always a reason." Joe. Yamato. "The world is actually an unbelievably great place." Was that why Shinji was like this? He wasn't old enough yet to have run into a fraction of the things that made life worth living, worth fighting with every bit of strength he had to survive?

Shinji still didn't seem to be internalizing anything of what Hiro was trying to say, beyond filing it as 'old man platitudes,' but at least he was trying to listen. Trying to understand, even if it seemed to be far enough outside his experience he might as well have been having one of _those _conversations with Alcor. Being the Will of the Species seemed to come with charisma: had Shinji even noticed that he wasn't a nonentity, that people paid attention to him yet? That people would want to open up to him, to give him their hearts?

Well, according to Daichi, but Hiro wasn't sure it was really anything special. You just… had to listen to people, and spend time with them, to figure them out. If you cared, then other people would care back…

Ah.

That was it. That was the vibe he was getting from this kid.

The Lonely One.

Pain. As bone-deep as Alcor's when he was the Anguished One, an utter rejection that left scars – were they really scars if the wounds refused to close? Because as long as a wound was still hurting, it was still possible for it to heal.

If what was going on now had something to do with Second Impact? An event that killed half the world and left the other half bereft? Missing their loved ones, feeling the lack of those severed bonds, when surviving meant that the survivors were _left behind_? Who better, no, who _could _chose where the world was going to go from here than someone who felt that pain, who could not escape it?

And if Second Impact really had been set off by humans, a betrayal like that…

When Hiro's choice came, humanity had been under attack from an outside power, and really the only question had been how to respond. Go on as if nothing had ever happened, accept that they'd 'deserved it' on some level and try to become 'better' or stand their ground. Hiro's choice had been obvious, it was just a matter of how exactly he was going to make it happen. How he was going to fix the world.

So, was Shinji here to figure out the solution to Second Impact? How the human spirit was going to endure, to move on from that great wound? His choice: was it how he healed the wound in his own heart that was going to matter?

If that was the case, then Shinji's lack of confidence, the way he flinched back from praise and the world… If he didn't have those flaws in his own spirit, how could what he experienced let him find a way to heal them in humanity's?

Trying for the sake of others, living for the sake of others, that was a good start, but, "You're both just middle schoolers-Yes, I know you're a college graduate-" this Asuka reminded him of Yamato _so damn much_, "so if you don't come back alive, how are we adults supposed to look at ourselves in the mirror?" And Alcor would angst, blaming himself because they'd died so he could live, forgetting that it wasn't just Alcor's life at stake. If Polaris replaced Alcor, then Polaris would once again try to _delete all of humanity_.

They might have a lot more people under shields than last time, but billions of people, more than ninety-eight percent of the human race, would die within twenty-four hours of Polaris regaining Heaven's Throne.

Hiro just smiled and didn't mention that, though. It wasn't 'no pressure,' but if Shinji was worried about some choice that for now was only a hypothetical for him, that would distract him from worrying about the immediate threat of battle and near-total annihilation.

He knew _he _wouldn't have been so calm about the threat of Mizars escaping the Dragon Stream and overrunning all the land they had left (if the Void didn't get them first now that the seals were down) if he hadn't been preoccupied with the knowledge that as soon as Mizar was dead, all of his companions were going to go their separate ways, dividing into factions, and tomorrow they'd turn on each other, all of them fighting for the outcome they wanted, for what they believed in. When Hiro hadn't known if… forget whether bringing back the old world was possible, he hadn't seen any way for them to continue to exist _as humans _without being eventually wiped out, not if keeping their free will would just make Polaris make another attempt to destroy them later.

The way he was now. Along with Eli, and Kewkab.

Well, the Vice-Director of JPs reflected, if humanity ever was finally safe from annihilation by supernatural forces, he'd be out of a job.

* * *

_The "simple service' quote is Kipling, the Sons of Martha. Not mine: public domain._

_Vasuki and the Sea of Milk are also a Digital Devil Saga 1 reference. _Man_, that boss… I ended fighting him when my level was such that I had too few HP to survive the recommended strategy, when I caved and looked it up. I was so new to RPGs I didn't really understand the concept of level grinding yet, and I ended up having to just take that ice attack and cast Null Phys so he couldn't crit me to death, since the AI would detect when I used an Ice shield and stun me with electricity instead and then, yes, proceed to crit me to death. When a boss casting their best almighty attack twice in a row Is one of the _less _evil things they can do, that's a hell of a nasty boss._

_Vasuki is the highest-level dragon in DeSu2, and dragons in that game get the upgraded race skill Evil Wave, which is as much of a gamebreaker as multi-strike, since it lets you snipe people from outside their own ranges. Unfortunately, this trench is just that deep._

_Shinji was the one to make the choice of what happened after Second Impact in the ending movies. That's rather like Kazuya, Hiro and the Demifiend choosing their Reasons/routes and therefore what became of the world/what new world was created through their actions._


	8. Circle Dance

Shinji took a deep breath, and tried not to think about the water that had already closed over his Eva's head. Well, he was already submerged in LCL, so really this was just like all those tests? On his father's orders, Ritsuko had focused on getting him to connect his mind to the Eva, not actual fighting or anything, but it should be vaguely like moving his own body, right? He already knew how to swim.

Except the Eva had a lot more mass, and thus momentum. And what did Shinji know about knife-fighting, since Ritsuko hadn't even bothered to send a gun, not at these depths? Well, Shinji didn't know how to use those, either.

He couldn't help glancing at the power display. According to it he had several hours' worth of concentrated magnetite in the battery pack, but that was with current power usage, and right now he was just sinking instead of fighting.

"Are you alright, Shinji?" Misato asked, and that was like normal, just like the tests.

"I'm fine so far," he said, getting out his cell phone and fiddling with it. He'd already set drain, but he didn't mention that to Misato, because it was really just a stupid idea. Drain let him absorb an enemy's power, yes, but how was he supposed to get that into his Eva? Maybe if he got a high enough sync ratio, the Eva really would act like his own body and that power would be shared, but it probably didn't work like that.

Still, it was a comfort to have _something _that he could try, if the power started to run out, instead of having confirmation that if that happened he was going to die. As long as no one actually told him it wouldn't work, he could delude himself into thinking he had a chance. Shinji knew that was stupid, but…

Misato had to walk him through how to sink faster: Shinji missed Ammut already. Theoretically Lord Nan Dou could fit in the cockpit with him, but Shinji would really rather not. That would be incredibly awkward and undignified, and even if Lord Nan Dou seemed fairly calm about being ordered around he was still a god. Shinji read off various things when Misato prompted him to, trying to put Scathach out of his mind.

"They're still not moving to intercept," he said Misato say, and could tell she was frowning.

"They launched an attack on Vasuki not long before you arrived that involved some of the guards from all three forces, so they didn't weaken any single force too much. Hopefully they're still reviving the guard forces. They have to worry about Megrez, too."

"It's attacking its allies?" Misato sounded doubtful. "Can we really count on it not to stop when the Evas get there?"

"Actually, that would be the perfect time for Megrez to make a break for it. Neither Polaris nor Eli will tolerate anything less than absolute power, and none of the septentiones but Alcor are even willing to frame the thought that someone other than Polaris might have a valid point. Not after what happened to Alcor. I'm not sure if Megrez _can _feel fury, but even if causing earthquakes is better than nothing, its purpose here is to kill humans, especially me. The tenshi are keeping it from getting to me, keeping it from carrying out the will of Polaris, so right now, they are _not _allies," Hiro explained. "Ideally, they'll head up past the Evas in pursuit of Megrez, and Shinji and Asuka can pick off the stragglers until they get to a depth our welcoming committee can reach – What's that?"

"It could be a giant squid," Misato said, although she clearly knew that wasn't very likely.

"Nothing's showing up on our detectors," Fumi said. "Just," boring old "radar."

Ritsuko confirmed, "That means it's not a magnetite-based entity." When both the tenshi and septentriones, as well as demons, were using that material to manifest. "Which leaves ordinary matter and particle-wave matter. I'm not detecting an AT field," but the angel might just not have raised it yet, even if leaving it down would leave it vulnerable. So far, they didn't have any way of identifying particle-wave matter without a physical sample and a good lab.

"What would an angel-a shito- be doing all the way out here?" Misato asked. "That other one went after Asuka's Eva during the transport, but she was at sea for days." Convoys that huge did not move as fast as mythical flying fish. "If it's after the Eva, how could it get out here so fast?"

"The tenshi are moving to intercept, and the big one just… summoned multiple smaller enemies?"

"Megrez can bud off pieces of itself. As long as we destroy the main bodies the small fry will die with them, but it can still use them to trigger earthquakes."

"So which of us is this angel going after?" Asuka demanded.

"We're not certain it's after you, Asuka," Misato told her almost absently, attention focused on the screens. "From the vector…"

"I don't think Polaris came right after Adam," Hiro was using NERV's name for that entity now, since they were the experts, "but going after one of Polaris' servants would make sense…"

If Adam's goal was what JPs theorized, usurpation of Heaven's Throne, instead of what NERV was worried about, annihilation of the human race. Not that it really made a difference whether humanity's extinction was the goal or they were collateral damage, when they'd be dead either way if the shito reached Terminal Dogma.

"It would make more sense to wait until the other two and the Eva were exhausted, then pick off the victor," Misato pointed out, "but I'm not going to complain." About a stupid enemy.

"Um, Misato?" Shinji said. "There's one here that isn't a tenshi-type," different race skill, "besides Megrez."

"What? Oh, you're using the summon app's enemy scan?" Misato asked, "is there any way we can get the data?"

"Um… Let me send you a screenshot," Shinji said. He still wasn't used to the new phone Misato had bought him, since she'd wanted him to have something sturdy. She must have been thinking of making sure he could use it even in LCL from the beginning, he realized.

"Israfel," Asuka read from her screen, having navigated the summon app while Shinji was still trying to locate this phone's print screen function.

"That's the same as mine," Shinji told her, surprised.

"So the shito has multiple bodies too?"

Ritsuko opened her mouth to remind Misato that there was precedent, then remembered that Misato didn't know that humanity was the angel Lilim, one souls spread among billions of individuals. "Let's just hope there are only two."

"You said it," Hiro agreed with an audible wince. "We _don't _need two Mizars."

"Mizar?" Misato asked him.

"We'll handle him," Hiro reassured her.

"You know," the Colonel told him, "I realize you used to operate in top secret," the world was still spazzing over the existence of demons, "but we really do need to set up some sort of information exchange. What if you plan fails?"

"I would," the Vice-director said, "but the problem is that if we tell you, then you just having that information might change the future, and then they might do something else, something we don't already have a counter for. It's not all that easy to keep things at a reasonable level of 'destined to fail.' Especially if we've already got two more groups making changes."

"What about the tenshi?" Misato countered.

"We _have _shared information on the tenshi. It's in the summon app. The Hotsuin Clan hasn't come into conflict with tenshi since the war with Russia, and that was really more the Russian Orthodox Church – prayer-backed curse," he explained. "We don't have a dedicated analyst for them because my cousin said he'd be a consultant if we ever needed one."

"That's nice of him."

Heh. "He just likes killing angels. And there we go."

"Mimic Type," Misato read off the screen of Hiro's cell phone.

"Let me pull up the skill description long version…"

"Use morphic resonance to imitate the advantages of others, such as Lilim's ability to exist in multiple bodies. Will survive as long as at least one of its two bodies does… Ritsuko, is there anything you can do to increase the Eva's dive speed?" And what was Lilim? "At least this says its copied abilities aren't as good as the originals." That was something. "So it wants to use Megrez' earthquakes to destroy the geofront?" Crack open Terminal Dogma?

"Don't ask me: I'm not even going to try to guess," Hiro told her. "You're the expert on Shito: I don't know enough about how they think yet."

"You don't think it's likely?"

"It's reasonable: that's what the tenshi want to keep Megrez here for, anyway."

"You still don't seem all that convinced."

"It depends if they're more like the tenshi or the septentriones. Tenshi aren't that different from demons – if you follow the theory that demons exist because of the collective unconsciousness, then they're based on the human mind, but their wills are confined by the concepts… Demons are a lot easier to negotiate with than humans. Simpler, although that doesn't mean they're stupid. The septentriones, though…"

"You can't try putting yourself in their shoes because they're so inhuman?"

"Putting yourself in their shoes is the worst possible way to try to understand anyone," Hiro said, sounding a little shocked that anyone Misato's age took that saying seriously. "Because they're _not_ you, they're _them_. They're not going to react to things the way you would react, they'll react the way _they _react, and for their own reasons. " He looked almost pained, wincing at some memory of stupid. "Oh, sorry, it's not you, it's just… Someone. He thought that way, but he didn't understand most of the reasons people did things because they weren't things _he _would have seen as important, or that… practically no one thought the way he did, so it seemed as though a lot of people around him were just not making the effort. Or that they were just stupid, instead of… Anyway, what you said reminded me of that headache. Sorry about the lecture, I'm still working on banging it into his head." He sounded oddly cheerful about this.

Misato wondered if he meant the septentrione, but she didn't think so. "Any improvement in the time to intercept?"

"It's displayed on your screen," Maya told her.

"Is there anything we can do but watch?" Misato asked, just in case Ritsuko would come up with something if prodded enough.

Shinji heard someone drumming his fingers.

"Well?" Misato asked Hiro.

"It's not a good idea."

"Well, we are brainstorming here."

"Al Saiduq has ill-starred, but the tenshi can cure it and when the others need to be destroyed at the same time, casting it on one Megrez or one Israfel won't help," he told her.

"What is ill-starred, and I thought you didn't have anything with that kind of range?"

"It makes everything hurt more, so it's useless if you don't have anything in range that can actually attack." Yeah, the tenshi looked like they were gearing up to attack the Israfels, and Israfel might start trying to destroy Megrez, but Hiro wasn't going to count on them to get the timing right, especially if the effect made the damage different bodies took uneven. "And I don't want him distracted, even if this isn't the same thing as trying to attack a being of the Record _in _the Record. We should be able to handle this ourselves, right?"

Damn right they should be able to protect their own damn planet, so Misato nodded. "But are there any more… odd phenomena that you can think of? Pretend I'm totally new to this." And she was, to demonic warfare, anyway. "But I can ask stupid questions like a champion."

"Suddenly coming up with crazy plans is one of the best ways to beat things like this," Hiro agreed. "Shinji, Asuka? If your apps are working, see how much of the fight you can observe. Tenshi use a lot of healing spells."

Shinji nodded: he'd already seen that. He'd set diarama on himself, but Ritsuko had told him absolutely not to even think about using it on the Eva, when they didn't know how the hybrid biomechanical body would react to healing skills. Would half of it reject the other half? Like the half with the battery pack?

The Israfels looked like ungainly things, even worse than the Evas, but they were moving faster than Shinji and Asuka were.

Shinji had hoped that they might not revive each other: they didn't have samarecarm, but when one of them finally fell to the tenshi, using their race skill had the same effect. Maybe if they copied the Megrezes, they'd lose the Lilim race skill? Unless it was part of the Megrez race skill too.

They didn't send tenshi to fight Asuka until she got close to her Megrez: that made sense, not wanting to divide their forces too much? Shinji had watched over a few battles to know it wasn't good to be too far away from the healers.

"That _is _weird: why are they letting the Evas closer than the Israfel?" Hiro wondered.

"Well, Unit 02 still sinking," Ritsuko pointed out. "Maybe they're hoping Megrez will try to follow her down?"

"It might just be that the tenshi are more worried about another administrator's creation than _humans_." They very well could be that stupid.

The angels were smaller than Shinji's knife. By quite a lot. Until he made it glow with his AT field, it was almost harder to more his arm though the water than to push the knife through their bodies, shaking off flesh, cloth and feathers.

It was eerie: the darkness down here was absolute, except for his own glow, the angels' eyes and the flashes given off by spells, fire and lightning but mostly almighty, even though a lot of them had ice attacks. Maybe they weren't using them because they were underwater? They weren't using wind spells either.

So, he had to see the Eva's arms as his arms… It helped to visualize it as though the Eva was inside of him instead of the other way around, except the AT field didn't cling to the surface of the Eva's armor then.

It was weirdly easy to think of the knife as an extension of himself, but weren't people always thinking of swords that way in movies?

If the water was full of blood, it was too dark to tell. That was a relief. And they could just come back to life anyway, so it wasn't like he was killing people. _'_Same thing as demons,' Shinji thought, and then tried once again not to think of Scathach.

This was like cleaning a chicken – Shinji had grown up in a rural area. Not like really killing people, or real war. Misato had fought people before, hadn't she? Not demons or angels? Remembering that dark madness, how every blow struck had just healed it because those blows were its life, its nature, he knew he didn't want to ask.

Megrez didn't look human at all: it was a big tan ball with rainbow-colored cones sticking out of it. If Shinji ever actually managed to get close enough to hit it, he didn't think it would be much different from kicking a soccer ball.

"Shinji! Move it! I don't want to stand around while this thing heals itself because I'm waiting for you!" Asuka called.

"Don't get cocky, Asuka:" Misato reprimanded her mildly. "There are more tenshi from Megrez's middle body on their way."

"I bet they're not bothering to reinforce Shinji's."

Misato didn't say anything about that muttered comment: Asuka was right, after all.

"Oh, hey, I managed to hack their apps. Display of Meggies and their health on screens eleven and twelve," Fumi said, sounding almost bored.

"Hacked their apps?" Hiro asked, a little worried. They didn't want just anyone doing that: a hackable demon army would be bad_._

"Well, their cell phones, technically. Just the display: don't worry, boss man. If I found a hole in Al Saiduq's programming, I'd sound a lot more excited." Instead of merely amused.

"So with this, we can coordinate when we finish them off… It is healing itself." Misato could see them do it. "What about the Israfels?"

"We've still got the middle one," Hiro reminded them. "It's your operation, and there's the question of the Israfels, but I would focus on clearing out the tenshi." With their healing spells to add to Megrez's own healing abilities?

"Right. If they try to keep the middle one safe instead of reinforcing the other two again, I'll have Asuka and Shinji work their way towards it after dealing with the shito."

When there were only a few clumps of angels left, Megrez shot off a few of its cone-bits in the direction of Shinji and the angels, then started heading straight up. Since that was the idea, Shinji let it go, heading towards the nearest cone unprompted just in case they could cause earthquakes.

So did Israfel. Unjointed limbs wrapped around the cone, pushing it into the shito's body point-first.

The shockwave from the explosion sent Shinji tumbling head over heels: his AT field shielded the Eva, but the shockwave moved the water around the Eva.

"What was that?" Asuka wanted to know. "Did the angel just self-destruct?"

"It took one of the cones with it," Shinji told them, heading for the only group of tenshi here that was left.

"K-Adam's access to the Akashic Record has been restored, Shining One. Him and his brood." Al Saiduq sounded mildly surprised. "They were severed from the Record when Adam was deposed: it seems as though that angel copied Megrez's coding and forwarded it to the others through its own death."

"…So they're capable of self-sacrifice," Hiro said, and Shinji heard the squeak when he leaned back in his chair. "_Damn."_ Not good.


	9. Bread for Cerberus

_Thor being allied with the angels is referenced in Nocturne, where they're followers of Chiaki's reason of Yosuga along with all the angelic-type demons, but also goes back to Shin Megami Tensei 1. _

_Anyone remember in the Amala Corridor in Devil Summoner RK1, hearing a voice say, "The ambassador has launched the nukes!" In SMT1 the American ambassador was actually Thor (although the American soldiers in the game are good guys), who nuked the world on the order of the angels._

_Since you can return to the Corridor in DS RK 2, one would think that the Raidous and their cat would have done some research into it over the 20th century, especially since DS RK1 involves a future Kuzunoha interfering in the past. _

* * *

The director of JPs looked up from the papers spread out over his desk, in an office that looked like people actually did work there instead of being a place that existed solely for the purpose of intimidation, to make others feel small.

Shinji couldn't feel very reassured despite the contrast with his father's dark office when hard grey eyes examined him through a fall of messy silver hair. He held out the coffee and bag of takoyaki Hiro had pressed into his hands before pushing Shinji in the direction of Director Hotsuin's office and carrying Asuka off to go see her Eva, feeling rather like they were an offering to placate an angry demon, or raging god. "Um, Hiro said you wanted to see me? And that I should bring you your lunch?" In case Yamato was too busy to eat and too focused for any underlings to dare try to force him.

"Calling him Hiro? How familiar of you." Yamato's eyes narrowed further. "Shinji Ikari. Fourteen years old, blue-eyed despite being officially of pure Japanese blood. Possessed of a nearly-unique aura of spiritual power. Son of Yui Ikari and, according to your records, Gendo Rokubungi, who took his wife's name despite her being of no particular clan at all. In fact, her extended family is notable by their nonexistence, and her background records by their flimsiness. It's as though they thought no one would dare look too closely: It's almost insulting. But," and this was the most important thing, "You are fourteen years of age, if barely, so despite all the red flags in your family history and how clear it is that one of your parents isn't who they seem to be, even though I have not been able to get my hands on genetic samples of either Ikari for comparison, you aren't Hiro's. Too old."

So Yamato was not, in fact, going to have to murder Shinji's mother. Shinji couldn't help feeling relieved, even though that was kind of stupid when she was already dead. Then again, if demons and onmyoji were real?

"Preliminary scans of your genome show a complete lack of known identifiers of non-human blood. Just like Hiro." So if Yamato hadn't known better… "Your fellow pilot is Asuka Langley Sohryu. Mother Dr. Kyoko Sohryu, also deceased. Father unknown, but confirmed to be inhuman. Dr. Otome is cross-checking her DNA sample with our files, but since she's too short to be a nephilim, she's most likely a valkyrie."

"Valkyrie?"

"Red hair," Yamato said, as though that explained it. "The Hotsuin clan conducted extensive research into foreign gods for the sake of protecting this land. Thor is also possible, but a daughter of Odin would be easiest to arrange. The knowledge the Kuzunoha are gathering long ago confirmed my ancestor's reports that Thor and Odin are allied with the tenshi."

"You… aren't saying that Asuka is a traitor," Shinji said slowly, not quite sure why.

"Hiro's assessment is that she is too proud of her determination to protect the human race, and lacks the subtlety. However, he also admitted that she reminds him of me, which means his judgment is compromised." Yamato smirked, made happy by the thought that Hiro had a soft spot for him, even if this meant he had to make sure this Sohryu kept her distance from his Hiro. "Someone with her intelligence should see how lacking humanity is."

"Asuka's not a traitor." Shinji's hands tightened on the coffee cup and the bag of takoyaki, and he drew his arms in tighter to his body. No, she wasn't, even if she did think almost everyone (especially Shinji) was stupid.

Yamato finally seemed to notice the food, perhaps because he'd evaluated what Shinji was holding in case they were weapons or worse, a cell phone. It wasn't that he was worried he'd lose a battle of demons, not when JPs had commandeered Tokyo Tower for the duration and that meant Yamato could call on the power of the Dragon Stream to aid him in battle, but some important report or another would certainly be ruined by the blood, flames or spilled coffee. "Give me those," he said, coming out from behind his desk to snatch them out of Shinji's hands just in case he didn't surrender them fast enough on his own.

Shinji stared as Yamato sat down again, already devouring the takoyaki. Was he even chewing, or just swallowing them whole?

…Weren't his canines a little long?

While Shinji was wondering if Yamato was a snake (or maybe even dragon) hanyou of some degree, and that was why he seemed so cold-blooded and ate like he was supposed to swallow his prey whole (Shinji was sort of aware that those were the kind of whimsical thoughts a child would have, but under the circumstances), a bright light appeared in the room behind him.

Shinji spun around, grabbing for his cell phone. "It's an angel!"

"It's just Remiel," Yamato told him, tossing down the last two takoyaki. "What is it." Even if Remiel had helped with the recent operation, appearing in Yamato's office? While he was occupied, but before he'd had his coffee?

Humans were _idiots_. Angels and septentriones were worse.

Yamato was the only one present who knew angels enough to recognize that Remiel was flustered. "I must ask you to insist that your subordinate restrain his liegeman. When I appeared before the Son of Man to protest that the Fallen Star was tempting me to abandon my Lord and instead enter the service of humanity, he indicated his approval!" With a thumbs-up.

"Tempting you? With what?" It couldn't possibly be a decent wardrobe. Yamato looked at Remiel's emerald-covered tie with palpable distaste. At least wearing a tie was making an effort to fit in, be presentable by human standards and show respect for those he was working with, but all angels appeared to have missed the memo that less was more. Remiel wasn't the only one – perhaps they thought that all humans were easily impressed by shiny things.

As much as Remiel needed a decent wardrobe, however, that certainly wasn't something that Alcor could provide. The red and black striped-shirt was a reminder of his true form, but the ruffled collar was just something he liked. Well, _Yamato_ didn't like for people to see the Hotsuin Clan's spiritual patron wandering around looking ridiculous, but at least he wasn't into what Akie referred to as 'bling.'

Alcor had tempted Yamato's ancestors into the service of humanity by offering them power (and knowledge, but Alcor didn't see that as a commodity) they had used both for that purpose and to enhance the standing of the clan. The angel already had power, and his 'family' were the other angels, so that wouldn't work.

Remiel frowned, but did not say. His dignity reflected on his Lord's, and even though the Hotsuin might be aware of their race's weakness, thanks to the One who Resurrects, it was still far too… Not shameful, but…

He appeared to have piqued the human's curiosity.

What Yamato was thinking was that the septentrione would have been reminded by all this of the sad fate of his brothers, shackled to a creator and master who was quite willing to let them go die, one after another, without any particular concern. The difference was that while the other septentriones had never shown any doubt in Polaris, or at least Alcor had never shown any hope that he might convince them to stop attacking humanity, at least Remiel understood that human life had meaning and value, unlike the other angels and septentriones.

So Alcor would want Remiel to join humanity's side not just for the sake of humanity, the race Alcor had looked after and had now adopted him in return; not just for Remiel's own sake, so the angel did not remain plagued by doubts, or rather inklings of the true nature of his own master and how little he meant to it; but also for Alcor's own sake, as his brothers went to their deaths for a second time. At least someone might be saved, even if the fate of the other septentriones could not be changed.

Meaning that he would have pulled out all the stops in order to convince Remiel, and both Remiel and Alcor were beings without free will created to serve an administrator. So Alcor would know Remiel's weaknesses better than anyone but a fellow tenshi.

The angels had been programmed to adore and praise a god, and loving someone meant wanting them to love you in return. Yamato knew how he felt about his _own _minions. At least he looked after them, unlike some people, and didn't expect more of them than they were capable of, but _love _them? Ridiculous. If Eli was capable of love, it certainly wouldn't be wasted on them. If Eli had _ever _intended to care for them at all, it wouldn't have created them to be its doormats, that was the bottom line. Love required respect, and how could you respect a spineless insect crawling at your feet, licking your boots even when they didn't need cleaning? Yamato felt irritated just thinking about it.

What Remiel wanted, the angel whose name meant God's Mercy, was for his God to be merciful towards humanity, his free-willed children. Yet how much more must he long for God to have mercy upon the angels, and return their feelings, the feelings he had cursed them with at their creation?

Yamato wasn't a fan of sympathy, much less pity. The only person he had ever loved, family obligations aside, was Hiro, and at least Hiro was worthy of that respect, while Remiel's adoration kept making him delude himself into thinking that of course what God really did want was for humanity to be alright, because of course a god that was _worth _loving would feel that way.

It was a _useful _delusion for Yamato's purposes, since it made Remiel lend humanity his strength, so he had no reason to try to disillusion Remiel. That wasn't the tack Alcor would take either, Yamato knew: Alcor _knew _that heartbreak, the anguish of being cast out, unwanted.

No, he would want Remiel to find happiness, with Alioth about to descend on them next (although making it _descend, _that was the tricky part) and Mizar coming to his doom after that, Alcor's own former companion star.

What would 'tempt' Remiel? What would grant him the happiness he'd been made to crave, but couldn't have because he was too honest, had seen too much to deceive himself into thinking that he was loved by God?

Tempting Remiel, 'to abandon his lord and instead enter the service of humanity,' hmm?

The angel wouldn't lie directly, but why was Yamato suddenly struck with the feeling that wasn't quite what had been said? That would have been the intent behind it, of course: Alcor had thought humans and their potential were fascinating from the beginning, and being cast out by his own kind had only made him dedicate himself to looking after them even more because he had nothing else to exist for, except a purpose he wished he could forswear. Not until…

"He offered you Hiro, didn't he." Told the angel that it was possible to replace Eli with a worthier master. Hiro, supposedly the reincarnation of a true son of man, Eli's own grandson. Yamato didn't really give a damn whether Hiro was the Shining One because he had once been the focus of humanity's will or because he had a divine soul. What he cared about was that it meant lesser beings who didn't deserve him kept trying to take Hiro's time and attention for their unworthy selves.

_His _Hiro.

Yamato tolerated Alcor these days, because even if the septentrione had warped the fate of the Hotsuin to defend humanity the way Alcor was once bound to defend Polaris, even if Hiro _had _chosen Alcor over Yamato, with the fate of humanity at stake, there was still some fellow feeling there…

Well, the real reason was that Yamato wanted Hiro, and Hiro had made it clear that letting Alcor hover around him was non-negotiable.

For this Remiel with his ridiculous tie and his ridiculous face to kneel before Hiro and sing his praises, for Hiro to pat him on the head and say he didn't have to do that, really, but there were plenty of useful things he could do that Hiro would appreciate?

A few years ago, Yamato's only and obvious choice would have been murder, to kill Alcor so hard both his stars blew up, but Hiro _was _a good teacher.

Which was how Shinji found himself backing away slowly from that fanged grin, and then found himself with a third extremely powerful demon in his roster.

He just hoped that Misato wouldn't mind Shinji having an angel.

* * *

"Yes, Misato Katsuragi?" The septentrione turned to look at her, but she was fairly sure that was for politeness' sake. She made a note that she definitely hadn't managed to sneak up on him in his office, even when he was working on something and Ritsuko, at least, would have been dead to the world by this point.

"If the shito were severed from the Akashic Record, why haven't you done that to the other septentriones. Look me in the eye," she said, managing not to snap at him when he lowered his gaze.

"I am not that powerful, Misato Katsuragi," he told her. "I may be able to wield the power of Heaven's Throne, but that is only because I am a being that exists on that level, unlike humanity. Polaris created us as servants, not equals. If it weren't for the Shining One gathering so much of the will of the species, and with it your power to alter reality, I would not have had enough power to restore the old world even with Heaven's Throne."

"And yet supposedly you're fighting off Polaris and the others, or you're strong enough they're not trying to take it from you directly," she corrected himself when she opened her mouth, remembering what Hiro said about the septentriones not trying anything if they didn't know they'd win. So why didn't they think they could win against Alcor? Especially before the septentriones started getting killed on Earth.

"I am… I was," he said, frowning a little, "the Sword of Polaris. Combat is my forte: I was meant to keep the unworthy from reaching Heaven's Throne and troubling Polaris, so I am well suited to keeping him from recovering it as well. But combat is no longer my purpose in life."

"And you're… unhappy about this?" If they were so alien, why the body language? Deliberate imitation of humans? If so, why frown like that, what was he trying to convey, since he must not have _wanted _to make her suspicious.

He blinked at her, a little slowly, a little off from how a human moved. "No, I am very grateful to the Shining One, that I have another purpose now. It is simply that it is hard to grasp how it is possible, and yet _all _of you humans choose your own purposes. You have no conception of how unnatural you are, how you live in ways contrary to the physical workings of the universe and the ordering of time, and yet… I like it. I like it very much. Even though the Shining One said to say that it makes my brain hurt." He smiled at her. "But I cannot make as much use of Heaven's Throne as Polaris did. Under normal circumstances that is a good thing, because what the Shining One let me realize I hoped for was that humanity could be freed from the control of _any _administrator." Which included acting administrators such as himself. "In a contest of the power of administrators against any of the real administrators, but especially Polaris, I would lose, but so far I have been able to keep them from reaching and taking Heaven's Throne. As I said, that was my original purpose." That, he could do.

Especially since he was far more motivated to defend it on humanity's behalf than he had been to protect Polaris.

"So what happens now that there are more of them on the Record? Can you still hold them off?"

He nodded, and it took her a moment to figure out that he was acknowledging that she was right and they were in trouble instead of saying that yes, he could handle it. "All of them appear to possess human 'free will,' or something close to it, at least to a limited degree. As they are now, I do not think that they can even occupy Heaven's Throne – that may be why they need what you possess," inside the Geofront, "but since they, unlike we septentriones or the tenshi, were created with… Allowed to have," he admitted, since this was a deliberate omission on Polaris' part, "the ability to alter personal fate you call free will, and they are willing to fight even when victory is not certain, they might be able to do to me what the Shining One did to Polaris." Take Heaven's Throne from him by force. "So far they have not attacked, but I believe that is because if they _did _change the situation so I was deposed," even though right now the record of all spacetime said that he would not be, "right now they cannot take the throne themselves, which means it would fall to Polaris, and he would then use its power to eliminate them. So for the moment it is to their advantage not to defeat me."

"I thought you septentriones had trouble thinking of things like that." What would happen if immutable fate was altered. Or even thinking of doing the impossible as an option.

Alcor smiled. "I have been with you for all of your history. Also, the Shining One and our friends want to help me understand, and they possess considerable power. I am very happy to have these bonds with them, even if it is very disconcerting to watch this affect my files." To some degree, he could not blame the others for thinking of human power only as a deeply sick and unnatural thing, not _wanting_ to let personal observation correct that first impression when interacting with them gave that power more opportunities to affect, or _infect, _them.

"It is a pity, however… The absorption of the tenshi is already complete, and yet even though they have been made part of the mass unconsciousness of the human race, they do not seem to have been granted the ability to change by it. Of course, you think of them as beings that are unable to change or see reason, and according to the Ancient One angels have not had friendships with humans since a long time ago in the alternate phase state in which you were created by Eli instead of Polaris. He said that Eli eventually forbade them to help you or come among you as equals at all, because he lost too many of his servants that way." Alcor smiled at that thought, because was not he himself the servant of an administrator corrupted and stolen away by the human race? "Since humans have not been allowed to create bonds with the remaining angels, you have not come to care for their welfare enough to alter reality on their behalf." So it was the angel's own fault, in a sense. One could not help those who refused to be helped, but it was still a pity.

"The tenshi are human now?" While the shito were genetically human.

"No: they're like demons." Alcor raised his hand to his mouth. "I really can't think of how to describe the process in more detail without using what the Shining One calls tenses you don't have. I would recommend that you ask the Ancient One, but I do not think he perceives this phenomenon. Or that it does not exist in the universe he interacts with. One theory is that the reason you humans are all able to invent individual purposes is that you possess individual realities centered on yourselves: it seems incompatible with the fact you possess a shared mind that links all humans, but with humans it is absolutely possible for two contradictory things to be true at the same time. Fumi Kanno calls this process 'I reject your reality and substitute my own.' Your ability to overwrite reality requires the ability to simultaneously interface with and act according to several different realities instead of one, the way we septentriones do. The current reality must be faced in order to effectively overcome and replace it, and part of the process of this replacement is acting as though the preferred reality is the valid one. Of course, many humans refuse to see any but their preferred realities, or acknowledge that the realities of other humans are valid for those humans, but this weakens your inherent abilities… Oh, I am sorry."

It appeared he wasn't managing to make this understood to her, the way he had failed to explain his nature and situation to the Shining One's friend Daichi when Daichi asked, shortly after the Shining One convinced Daichi to join them against Polaris. Not that Al Saiduq had been able to tell that Daichi was utterly confused at the time, since that was before Hiro taught him how to identify when humans were employing the 'smile and nod autopilot.' He was grateful that Daichi had trusted the Shining One enough to trust Al Saiduq by extension, which was again due to the bond between Daichi and the Shining One.

Human friendship was a wonderful thing. Not only did it allow them not to be alone despite not being consciously aware of the connection Alcor once had to his brothers before being cut off from them all, but like computers, the networking allowed them to perform more powerful reality alteration effects.

With so few living humans left, and the most powerful of the remaining humans believing in him, the Shining One had been the focus of a power that eclipsed Polaris by far. It was almost a pity human wills were rarely brought together to that degree, but when he thought about it, "When your wills were as one, it created a great and terrible power. A vast power that brought forth a miracle, but that power only existed because what was _left _of the will of your species was focused on one task, one goal.

"That unity only existed because billions of humans died, all of those individual wills and dreams snuffed out, and then the Shining One gathered together his former allies, convincing them to put aside their own dreams of creating a better world and instead follow his vision. Even though it was necessary, he still feels as though he did something he should not have. For humanity to be united, for one person to determine what all humans should think, should believe, instead of all of you creating your own purposes, pursuing your individual dreams and working towards creating a better world along countless vectors… It was a great victory, but also a great tragedy.

"It puzzles me that Yamato Hotsuin and Ronaldo Kuriki thought that it could possibly be a good thing for humanity to be in agreement about how to live and what were the most important things. Especially after they fought my brothers, and saw what comes of too much unity of thought." Of following a single view of the world, and not being able to see that those who proposed alternatives, who saw things differently, might have a point. "Ronaldo Kuriki has since come to think that he was aware on some level that what he dreamed of could not work, but he was so determined to make the world a better place that he used your human ability to ignore that reality. And it is true that humans often have the power to make the impossible work, but I think that is a power that comes from those bonds between individuals with different dreams, different wills. I feared that if either of them was able to make the new world as they willed it, then humanity would be crippled. Would lose the freedom that drew me to you in the beginning." He closed the binder he was looking through before she arrived and held it out to her. "Have you read this?"

"UN Committee for Human Instrumentality published documents?" she took the binder from him.

"This is just what is publically available. The Shining One asked me to read them." Since Alcor's eyes didn't glaze over when faced with line after line after line of small print.

Misato knew that didn't mean JPs _hadn't _gotten their hands on documents that _weren't _publically available, but if Alcor did have trouble keeping secrets and Hiro knew it, then he wouldn't have given him anything JPs wasn't allowed to have, especially with NERV employees still in the complex and one of them suspicious of Alcor already.

She opened the binder to see small print, pages and pages of it. "You don't like the idea of transhumanism?"

"Hmm? No." That meant no, it didn't bother him, not no, he didn't like it. "For humans to be different from other humans, for them to think differently: that is the nature of humanity. And I would certainly like it if humans had longer lives," he added. "As for being networked together, you already _are: _making you more aware of those bonds will only let you draw on their power more effectively. That is why I programmed the fate viewer." The Committee's version of transhumanism, though? "Ending conflict and bringing all of humanity together to make the world a better place are worthy goals, but there is nothing in here about creating connections between people. Normally United Nations documents show that they understand the importance of creating dialogue, trying to make humans _listen _to each other so that you may avoid needless conflict brought on by misunderstandings. Create bonds and use those bonds to create means by which to avoid conflicts that otherwise might have been inevitable as well. Although that is not always possible," he remembered. "While some humans lashed out at each other in the aftermath of Second Impact, the power of the United Nations stems from the fact it was the means by which you humans reached out to each other in order to accomplish your common goals." The reclamation of their world.

And, from Misato's perspective, the bitchslapping of anyone stupid enough to get in the way of that by killing _more _people when _billions _of people had just died. That was an important part of it too.

"If anything, some of the language? They seem to regard conflict mediation, peacekeeping forces, the engineering projects that are repairing this world and are the focus of the efforts of most transhumanist groups right now…" Alcor realized that speaking of Misato's boss' bosses in a negative way might be as counterproductive as speaking poorly of Eli to Remiel. Well, not as bad: Misato Katsuragi did not seem to be in love with Gendo Ikari nor any of the committee members. Still, "They do not speak of them positively, as something they seek to contribute to, but rather as though they are distractions from the true means of creating unity and a future for humanity. If they don't believe in the importance of bonds between people or that this world can be healed by human effort, as you carry out your individual wills, then I do not understand what they are trying to accomplish, or how."

Even Yamato had thought that the world would be made a better place by human effort, while Ronaldo had placed the importance of caring for others above all else. If the Committee believed in neither of those things, then what did they believe in? What was the reality they saw as ideal, that they were trying to impose on the world? Because they certainly seemed to have _some _ideal, and trying to make their ideals a reality was human nature, as Alcor understood it.

* * *

_Re. Yamato, in case anyone is reading this who hasn't played DeSu2: he's a yandere, which is kind of like a tsundere except they can be either dere (sweet) or yan (fucking psycho) as opposed to a tsundere, which is Japanese for 'goddamn annoying character type' – Yes, I know that's not the etymology, but it's what the word _means_, you know I'm right. Although actually, Yamato is very nice to you, it's everyone else who had better run for their lives. _

_Yamato is head of JPs at an extremely young age, and this is an example of Traded Basic Skill for Awesome Training deconstructed – he knows pretty close to zip about everything that doesn't have to deal with running a paramilitary demon summoning group, forget social interaction, because he was raised by tutors and had to grow up fast. Yamato is very Chaos alignment, the whole 'strong should rule, weak idiots drool,' so as you do his social link your badass will make you the first friend he's ever had. If you pick anyone else's ending route, he will decide that either they have seduced you away from him or you have been contaminated by proximity to the stupid, and the only way to save you from their stupid/evil clutches is to murder them. Painfully._

_And he will then go about murdering them all, and he's as good at it as the head of an organization like JPs in the Shin Megami Tensei verse' should be. If you haven't mastered the advanced race skills yet, you're SOL. Since DeSu are strategy RPGs, the term is 'kill zone.' Bring a Vile: Evil Wave won't let you keep up with him on first playthrough. Yamato is very smart, very deadly and very strong in both plot and gameplay, but he's adorably clueless about things like junk food. I find it cute, in kind of a man-eating tiger kitten way. _


	10. Family Reunions

_NHOrus had an awesome thought that I'm going to mention here in hopes someone uses it:_

_Know the beef bowl delivery girl from the P4 anime, who can always find people and then pick up their bowls no matter where they are left? Clearly she has been touched by the noodley appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It should totally be her persona._

_In terms of crazy-making, war beats eldritch abominations hands down. Consider the time period when cosmic horror was relevant. Think about where they got their inspiration. Think about World War I. _

_Just. World War I. There's your epic futility, and people discovering that under the myth that war is glorious is a terrifyingly bleak reality. Cowering in trenches waiting for the shells to hit – there's your powerlessness in the face of the universe, with knowledge and technology just making man worse off. I like the crashcourse (look it up on Youtube, so much useful worldbuilding stuff – oh, and knowledge about our world) summation of this book that summed up WWI: it turns out that modern war doesn't make you a man: It rips off your manparts. _

_That generation thought they were going to glory, and got hit in the face by Reality with an unidentifiable piece of something that used to be a person. _

_That's informing the JPs veteran attitude here. Eldritch abominations? They're very bad news, but hell, we get paid for this and if they're coming to kill us, better to take some demons and kill them first, or try anyway. _

_The killing civilians? Let's not do that again. Really. Let's not. _

_So yeah, if one takes a look at the 'if this ever happens again' contingency planning they did afterwards, it would likely show that the actual septentriones were a relatively minor concern compared to what happens when a species of persistence hunters _and their children _get hungry._

_I am still amused that there is a Global Strategic Reserve of maple syrup. O, Canada…_

* * *

"Are you _sure _it isn't a demon?" Asuka asked as they left the food stand.

"It's not a demon, it's Jungo," Hiro said, as though that was an explanation, nodding his thanks to the JPs employees who had given up their places in line for the Vice-Director and one of the heroes of the hour. "How he taught his cat to make sushi we don't know, but it's, well, he's _Jungo_."

Asuka looked at her food dubiously. How did that food stand pass this city's cleanliness inspections, with a cat in the food preparation area? Governmental corruption and JPs' influence?

"Eat up," Hiro said, eating his chawanmushi with practiced quickness as they walked across the park near Tokyo Tower towards the Evas. "You never know when you'll be trapped in battle after battle, and it's important to stay in good condition. Also, Jungo makes _really _good food. Both of them."

That explained the line that trailed halfway across the park, even though this area should have been cordoned off because of JPs taking over Tokyo Tower and the presence of the Evas and their crews.

"Remember how the other pilot," who hadn't been able to come with Asuka and Shinji because her Eva was still being repaired, "said that you needed to open your heart to your Eva?" Hiro asked as Asuka's eyes widened, the tuna melting in her mouth. "Dr. Otome ran some tests-"

"Evas and their construction are classified," Asuka reminded him.

"Nothing that would hurt him," Hiro said reassuringly. NERV and the Committee were UN, while JPs reported to the Japanese government. They were looking at an international incident if Gendo Ikari or his superiors wanted to make anything of it, but word had already leaked that NERV had intended all along to send _children _out to fight the angels, "but the Evas are genetically human." Hiro didn't add 'mostly,' or 'as human as most people are, anyway,' because the fact that the average human was either fifty or ninety-plus percent demonic? That was something best kept under wraps. The Shomonkai, this SEELE, that Mesian business shortly after Yamato was born: they had enough crazy cults as it was.

And that wasn't 'ranging from fifty to ninety percent demonic' that was 'we're absolutely certain that at least half our blood is demonic, but history and a little application of common sense says that it should be closer to ninety percent, so the only reason it looks like fifty is that the demon blood is hiding itself well enough we still can't spot it yet.'

"That would make him a person, and someone even younger than you are," was what Hiro did say. "So, don't you think we should at least try to make contact?"

Contact… that word made Asuka uneasy for some reason, but he was right. What if the mind of some little boy who didn't know any of the theory or tactics woke up and started trying to control her Eva, his own body, in the middle of a fight? Unless he knew to be quiet and let Asuka handle things, he'd get them both killed.

"It's possible there isn't much of a mind in there," adding all those mechanical parts? All that surgery? Might have given him a lobotomy. According to Fumi, she wouldn't be surprised if that was the idea, since a lot of the artificial parts were seals and restraints, not enhancements. "But we should try, don't you think?" It was Asuka's Eva.

"It's the right thing to do," Asuka said, because as much as it annoyed her when people looked at her and saw a kid who had no business fighting, this was her choice. This was something she'd trained, prepared, fought for. If they were going to worry about someone, they should worry about Shinji, even if he was surprisingly non-useless. Still, at least Shinji had chosen to pilot: if the mind in her Eva didn't even know what was going on? And Asuka was the one piloting, so she was the one responsible for that life, the one risking it as well as her own? Either way, she wanted to know.

What else weren't they telling her, about her own Eva? The one her own mother worked on?

The brown-haired woman waiting by the feet of the red Eva looked extremely mild-mannered. "Hello, Hiro," she said with a bright smile that made Asuka wonder if they were more than friends.

"This is Io Nitta," Hiro introduced her. "She's one in a million. One in a billion, I mean. Her channeling abilities are, too."

There was maybe the remnant of something that would have been a blush on those cheeks, but Io was used to compliments now. Even if this was Hiro. "I have channeled people who were still alive before," she told Asuka. Mostly at the request of Dr. Otome and her colleagues. For the dying, who fought to survive. Or not.

"She specializes in gods, though, so even if your Eva has an unusual soul," when the bodies of the shito were also genetically human(ish), what kind of soul was inhabiting this Eva? "it won't be a problem for Io. Right, Io?"

"I'll do my best," she said, exuding confidence. She might have almost died the first time she channeled, but on top of being her first time, that was a divine soul that had been shattered and partially deleted. There wasn't a death clip this time and Hiro was here, so even though Dr. Otome and Fumi had informed her of the risks Io really wasn't worried. "I've already felt her presence, I've just been waiting for you to get here."

"Wait, her?" Hiro asked.

"Yes." Definitely. "It's a warm, motherly presence."

Hiro looked at the Eva with a little caution, not really as though he was expecting it to attack but this was a reason to be wary. "Really?"

"What's wrong?" with my Eva? Asuka wanted to know.

"It's genetically male. So if there's a female soul in there, and a mother's instead of a child's, that means someone's possessing your Eva." Not that there was such a thing as 'male souls' or 'female souls,' but it was still a matter of personal identity. He guessed that the neural link with Asuka _could _be responsible for the female part – if the Eva never got to interact with anyone else, it might have imprinted on her, developed as a sort of echo or twin of her even if it was biologically male – but Io _was _a mother and Asuka wasn't. Io wouldn't make a mistake about the Eva feeling like a mother and Asuka couldn't be responsible for _that_.

"She isn't malicious," Io reassured them both after Asuka demanded an explanation. Or possibly an exorcism, stat. Hiro couldn't tell: he didn't know any German that wasn't related to food. English and Classical Japanese had never been his best subjects, but after what happened, he'd decided to work for (and/or take over) JPs once he got out of high school. He still had to study several languages, because the Hotsuin clan had done what amounted to kidnapping and sealing gods from all over the world and not being able to read ancient texts or warning labels in an emergency was very bad, but German wasn't one of them. "And she wants to speak to Asuka." Desperately.

"So why hasn't she?" Was it Asuka's fault for not opening her mind, or was it the thing in her Eva's?

"It might have something to do with all those seals built in to the hardware." Even Fumi, who had studied the Hotsuin clan's seals, a collection built up over centuries, hadn't seen half of them before. She'd identified the esoteric traditions in question, but even if quite a lot of Enochian, Kabbalah and alchemic secrets were common knowledge these days, which had allowed the Hotsuin to crib from them and reverse engineer quite a few useful things, like the Seal of Solomon, the real, expert practitioners had kept their secrets. "Sorry, Asuka." Hiro had thought they could take care of this relatively quickly: if it was something that would increase Asuka's fighting power like Rei said, then helping her know and connect to her Eva would be not just a good way to say thanks for her help, but help her help them in future. After this, though, "I'll have set some wards on Io, just to be on the safe side. It shouldn't take too long." But she'd have to wait around a bit while someone brought Hiro some ink and paper so he could draw out custom seals. He was carrying the standard kit of pre-printed, ready-to-activate seals, of course, as well as a few he'd made up himself, but since keeping the spirit from entering Io's body would defeat the purpose, he was going to have to come up with another way to protect her.

* * *

When Yamato stuck his head out his office and told the people waiting there he needed someone to escort Shinji to Hiro, they'd all been eager to volunteer. Not _too _eager, not in front of the Director when there was serious business afoot and most of them were waiting there because they had something important to report, but once they were far enough away from Yamato's office that it was safe to fanboy, Shinji had the disconcerting experience of being told, "That was amazing," by someone who wasn't Hikari, Touji or Kensuke.

Misato and Hiro had both said, "Good job," of course, but that was because Misato was a friend and Hiro was just, well, Hiro was just overflowingly nice. Shinji thought calling him the Shining One made sense now: he wasn't a star, stars were cold and remote (Shinji remembered Gendo looking down from that balcony, disdaining to come within a dozen meters of Shinji after all that time spent apart). He was a cheerful yellow sun, and somehow that made it easier to accept praise from him because Shinji could tell himself that Hiro was just being nice to Shinji because Hiro was Hiro and Shinji was _there_. It made some part of Shinji want to be around him in hopes he could have some of that warmth, while Rei awoke a muddle of feelings in him that made him not know what to do even when he did have Null Auto set.

"No, really," the man went on when Shinji didn't respond other than by blushing. "It was like the Director, or what happened ten years ago. The Vice-Director, Airi Ban in Nagoya." Hadn't she been around Shinji's age?

"I only beat one of them, and I'm the one that let Israfel get a piece of it."

"The Vice-Director only beat one of them. It made landfall by three of the towers, and the volunteer tamers along with a few of ours like Commander Sato and Dr. Otome divided up into teams to attack them simultaneously – a lot of us who hadn't met them yet thought it was crazy of the Director to give them that responsibility, but not if we'd seen them fight." Glancing sidelong at Shinji, he seemed to realize that the boy was hunching into himself because he was uncomfortable with praise.

"You were here when you fought the septentriones last time?" Shinji asked, hoping to change the subject.

"Well, not for all of them: some of the Mizars got me." He shuddered. That three-toothed mouth… it wasn't the ridged tentacles that featured in his nightmares, it was the other Mizars starting to sprout from the sides of even the separated parts of Mizar. Dividing, again and again and again, until what was left of the world swarmed with them. No matter how many you killed, there were always more, and he remembered the moment when he'd looked out at what used to be a perfectly normal city street in Tokyo, with a bakery that used to be good but was now closed because there wasn't any food and saw the tumbled-down buildings, the scorched wrecks of cars left over from the first day because no one had the time to care about clearing the streets and knew that they weren't going to survive this. The deletion of the rest of the world had already leaked out, and even if the Director had kept three cities and this much of JPs alive this long, their food wasn't going to last forever… He knew fear. He'd fought demons for four years already, since before the Director's voice changed, so he knew fear. Demons certainly knew how to use it against you.

That wasn't fear: that was dread. Fear was about possibility, uncertainty. Dread was knowledge of inevitability, not if but _when_.

A little under two minutes later, in his case.

"Do you… mind talking about it?" Shinji asked carefully, glancing at the JPs officer out of the corner of his eyes.

"It… won't be coming back soon. Not until things change again so the septentriones think they have a chance. Alioth, then Mizar and Betesnach." The stars of the Big Dipper. "If you see any red-and-black teardrop shapes on the ground, or patches of red-and-black mist, stay clear of them. Alioth shelled us with neurotoxins from the air." Not that he personally had seen it: he'd been posted to Osaka when Alioth hit Tokyo and what was left of Sapporo (not for long…).

"Does it bother you? To work with Dr. Saiduq," Shinji elaborated, since of _course _experiencing something like that would bother people. Poison… Shinji knew about poison since he'd lived in the country and they had to deal with bugs. His classmates had always thought he was chicken for not liking to be around poison, not just insecticides but all those poisonous plants everywhere.

It was so easy to die, wasn't it? It would be so easy to opt out of everything, to decide he didn't want to take any more crap.

So why did he shy away from the means? Shinji had thought it was because he was a coward who didn't have the guts to go through with it, and yet now that he thought about it, he was really more afraid of poison than he was of demons, even after Scathach. Both of them would kill him…

No. Demons would kill him. Poison was something he could use to kill himself.

Was it really himself that he had been afraid of, all along? The single thing most likely to kill him? But why? Obviously he'd only kill himself if he wanted to die: anything else would be stupid.

Well, he guessed, part of him didn't want to die, otherwise it wouldn't be trying to keep him away from oleander bushes.

Oh, right. If he died now, people would be sad, wouldn't they?

That was a weird thought, one that started to make something in the pit of his stomach ache confusingly the way meeting Hiro had, so Shinji shied away from the thought.

"Oh, him? He's…" It was the JP's officer's pause to try to figure out how describe Dr. Saiduq that gave Shinji time to think those disturbing thoughts, so it was a relief when he resumed. "Contrary to what Ronaldo Kuriki used to say about us, JPs policy is firmly against kicking puppies. He's _powerful,"_ certainly, "but we were used to the Director long before Vice-Director Kageyama started working here part-time and made Saiduq appear and talk to people." Make the mistake of talking down to Yamato Hotsuin because he was short and eleven when he decided to take over JPs, and he would annihilate you. Al Saiduq, on the other hand, was delighted when people said hi to him in the halls. One of these people was scarier than the other, although the Director was obviously _their _scary bastard, and they were lucky to have him. "JPs exists to defend against supernatural threats, so we're used to demons and gods. If I got flashbacks just being around nonhumans, I'd need another job."

"You have flashbacks?" Shinji asked, then looked down at the pavement. "Sorry."

"What? No, it's fine. You're in combat, so you should be asking that kind of question." Before he got them himself. "I've never actually had a flashback, I was being rhetorical. I don't think there's anyone who made it to day three who doesn't have nightmares sometimes." And the ones who had lived long enough to see the void for themselves? Brr. "Only app users kept their memories, and not even all of them. One of my friends came to work the first day back and had no idea why half of JPs had stayed home and everyone else was freaking out." A lot of people had put in a lot of heavy training time after the world was fixed, and the entire force put on an average of ten pounds until Dr. Otome and the Director sent out a very strongly worded e-mail about that. He himself couldn't fit into the pants he'd worn back then, although some of that was muscle from the additional training. "I think the people who would have had flashbacks or gotten hit with PTSD that hard are the ones who didn't remember."

It wasn't going to be that easy for Shinji, though. "At least you're fighting monsters." That was something. "It really is harder if they're human." Thank the ten million _gods _he hadn't been in Nagoya, fighting off people who were attacking JPs trying to steal food for their families. They'd had riots in Tokyo, yes, but the organized attacks were from yakuza. And the occasional person who was pissed off that JPs 'wasn't doing anything' about all the demon attacks and didn't want to hear that they didn't have the manpower. It wasn't as though they hadn't tried: even if the Director was cold-blooded back then JPs existed to guard Japan's people against supernatural attacks.

They'd lost two towers because the commanders of those JPs branches ignored the Director's orders and overextended their forces trying to protect the civilians. In fairness to them, they hadn't expected the sheer number of demons they'd have to deal with. The Hotsuin clan might have been preparing shields capable of deflecting strategic nukes for the day Polaris attacked humanity, but JPs was used to dealing with exorcisms, tracking down weak demons and fighting the rare powerful one that managed to escape its seal. They weren't an army, hadn't had any idea of how to fight a war and if the Director hadn't thought ahead, it wouldn't have occurred to anyone to worry about things like feeding their troops once all the regions that once supplied Tokyo's food were _gone_.

The only chance JPs would have had to test strategies for unmanageable demon numbers before the crisis was the Lockdown, and the Diet had insisted in pulling all of Tokyo JPs out of Tokyo in order to protect the politicians instead of leaving them inside the Lockdown. The few members who had remained in the area before the Lockdown started weren't alive when it ended. Someone besides Director Hotsuin should have wondered why the people in there with training had a hundred percent casualty rate. Not that their training had been with comps.

By the time he died, though, they had almost started to feel like an army. The stupid yellow dress uniforms that no one ever wore on missions before because they were of the 'stand out in a crowd so your allies know who not to shoot' school of uniform design had actually come in handy. It was still a relief to go back to plainclothes.

Until now, when the uniforms with the standardized built-in wards had once again gotten dragged out of boxes in closets by order of the Director.

When the two regional commanders hadn't listened to the Director, their towers fell and everyone in those cities died. When the world was restored and reports were made, the Diet had come _this close _to hauling them up for treason, and would have if the Director hadn't defended them. If you considered 'it's not their fault they were born stupid' a defense, anyway, but his heart was in the right place. Every member of JPs who was still alive when Director Hotsuin finally announced his plan to let Polaris alter humanity so he'd stop trying to exterminate them would have walked through fire for him. Especially since the shield that protected the cities was already down, their last bastions were dissolving after the defeat of Mizar and the food was running out so they couldn't have protected the towers much longer anyway.

Nagoya JPs had been so shocked to be attacked by humans that Ronaldo's forces had easily overrun the base the first time he attacked. A few of the civilian volunteers had done most of the fighting against the other civilians because it just wasn't… Those were the people they were supposed to protect. After that? Here JPs was, doing their best to keep what was left of humanity alive, and those ungrateful bastards were…

Then the world went back to normal and they realized they'd used demons to kill scared, panicked people who were just trying to survive.

Getting eaten by an eldritch abomination was extremely unpleasant, but it was a hazard of the profession. He hadn't felt right talking to anyone about it to anyone, taking up a therapist's time when medical was busy hauling people in and putting them on suicide watch after too many officers ate their guns. It was one thing to die trying to do your duty and another to kill relatively innocent people.

Well, thank goodness this Ikari wasn't going to have to do any of that. Most of the world might be some degree of angry that NERV had intended to send fourteen-year-olds to fight, but the idea that teenagers couldn't fight was clearly nonsense to anyone who had met both Yamato Hotsuin _and _Keita Wakui. Fighting people, though? Shinji Ikari and Asuka Sohryu being so young just made the thought of it worse. They had their whole lives ahead of them: being weighed down all that time by something like that?

So far the loose demons were contained in Tokyo-3, but looking out at the park, at all the tents that had been sent up just in case the park had to shelter refugees again, the way it had during the Lockdown?

Well, this time they were ready.

"If I was going to hate Al Saiduq, it wouldn't be because he was a septentrione," he told Shinji, in the interests of fairness. "The Shomonkai had a reason for letting comps with failed contracts keep summoning more demons. That was how Tokyo was overrun during the Lockdown: demons summoning their allies in the War of Bel. They let it happen so that it would be easier to summon their 'god.' Al Saiduq let it happen because the demons would attack septentriones as well as humans, and so that the surviving humans could get stronger, strong enough they might have a chance. The loose demons still killed a lot of people."

"You mean, there's some way to stop the loose demons from summoning more?" Shinji asked, stopping in his tracks.

"Of course. Nicaea keeps track of who lives and who dies, so it knows when a registered user is dead. All the Ticos would have to do is deactivate that user's summon account. This time, though, the summon app is only working for JPs and within a certain radius of Tokyo-3." Of course, this wasn't keeping the demons that could disguise themselves as humans from using the 'kill and replace' technique to leave the city, past the security checkpoints. Most of them got caught, but stopping all of them? That would take a real Lockdown. At least it was something, though, even if the demons did have other means of summoning their own kind.

"It worked for me when I was out in the ocean." And it was working now, Shinji saw, opening his phone just to check.

"Welll, you're not a civilian, are you?" the officer pointed out reasonably. "The comps, though, are still working for anyone or anything, anywhere. If it weren't for the fact the app doesn't work for everyone…" They'd be coming down on that Minegeshi bastard like the wrath of Susano-o for reactivating them, the Vice-Director's cousin or not. "At least the ones who aren't contracted to humans can be ordered home…"

Shinji would have asked why they weren't just _doing _that, then, when people were getting killed, if they hadn't entered the temporary walled-off area they were keeping the Evas for the sake of keeping gawkers and spies who wanted cell samples to create war Evas for their countries away and seen that Asuka was crying.

Shinji didn't actually do anything, because he had no idea what to do if someone cried. There was also a woman holding Asuka, which might have meant that the situation was being taken care of if she wasn't crying too.

Why was _Hiro _just standing around? He seemed like someone who might know what to do about crying people, so why wasn't he? Except for waving for Shinji to come over to him by walking around Asuka and the woman. And the circle of paper talismans around them and the Eva.

So… giving her some space? Okay, then. Shinji felt very relieved that he didn't have to try to make Asuka feel better by talking to her, because what if he screwed up and made her feel worse?

"This is nice, isn't it?" Hiro said cheerfully, which was when Shinji noticed when he was grinning. "I always cry when family members are reunited, usually of frustration… I'm joking," he added when Shinji stared at him. "But this is nice. All kinds of illegal, here anyway, but it is nice. I should probably ask someone about how German law treats willing human sacrifice and the imprisonment of human souls."

"Giant robots. You guys have _giant robots_ now." The blue-haired young man standing in the entryway of the enclosure looked delighted, shading his eyes in order to look up at the Eva and ignoring that Asuka and the woman were having a moment. "That's _awesome_. I have _got _to come back to earth more often." Looking down at Hiro and Shinji, he grinned. "Hey, little brother." Little brother? He looked almost a decade younger than Hiro. "So, is he yours?"

"You too? And I'm not _that _old yet."

The new arrival blinked. "Huh? Isn't this 2020?"

"No, it's 2015. And I would _still _not be that old," Hiro reminded him.

"Wow, the time dilation actually worked in my favor for once. And I _can _do math, I'm just teasing you because it's fantastic to be the older brother," he admitted, starting to pull off the cape he wore and roll it up. "I was too dead to be a proper older brother last time, and teasing hadn't been invented yet."

"I'm also not a manslut."

"Do you know how many of your widows I have in my army? A _lot, _that's how many."

Hiro rolled his eyes. "Knock it off, Abel."

"If it's only been three years since I checked in, why are there giant robots now? And can I have some?"

"Apparently they need human souls in order to operate, so they won't work in the demon world."

"…Necromantic giant robots now?" What?

'I know, right?" What kind of warped mind would come up with something like this?

"I have _got _to show Naoki this," Abel said, and vanished.

* * *

_The 'is he your kid' joke is also because I named Hiro Shinji on my first playthrough of Devil Survivor 2, before I found out about the manga name. Since, come on, lots of Evangelion references. As well as awesome Nocturne references. _

_Incoming Demifiend. Excuse me while I drag Kaworu away from the piano. Apparently because he's the host of Adam's soul, he has dream/memories of being punched in the face by someone with glowing tattoos. _


	11. Just Reward

_Diety Baal can be customized to make him immune to everything but almighty. _

_Short, but I'm just going to go ahead and post it._

* * *

"Giant mecha."

"I know, isn't it great?"

"I've met some artificial intelligences made with human souls that could turn into demons," Naoki said, glowing tattoos semi-concealed under jeans and a replica of his old hooded jacket, "and of course there's Arthur, but real giant mecha are new."

Abel nodded, then opened another of the sodas he'd sent a Black Frost to go grab him from the nearest vending machine. Hiro had one of the JPs staff escort it so no one made the mistake of attacking the aide to the King of Bel.

"I don't know whether to regret not being human anymore or feel that I made the right decision, beginning an eternal battle with an enemy who just comes back to life on your-their behalf," he said, since he was talking to the King of Bel, who wasn't exactly human either.

Abel nodded again. "A giant robot. And it's red, too."

"His is black," Hiro said, pointing at Shinji.

"Also a good color," Abel agreed, nodding. He gave Shinji a thumbs up on general principles, because giant robot pilot, before turning to Naoki. "You're looking thoughtful."

"I can't figure out how many centuries it's been since I've watched a mecha anime. Hell, it might have been millennia for all I know. You do have them in this world, right? Gundam?" Naoki asked hopefully.

"Gundam, Mazinger Z… You know what? Let's go over to Atsuro's. I left him my DVDs." Abel flung his arm over the other seeming-teenager's shoulder. "We can crash on his couch for a week, marathon giant robots, eat squid-flavored chips and lots more junk food… Did they have squid-flavored chips on your world?"

"I don't remember."

Determined not to let today be ruined by Naoki Kashima's mourning for his lost world, the planet he couldn't restore until it was safe because YHVH would destroy it the instant it was recreated to get back at the being who had dared defy him so many times, Abel gave him a push, feeling glad he had Naoya and Seth to keep an eye on his own homeworld so he could focus on the war. "Come on, you should invite your Black Frost too. He's enough like Frosty that he'll love it. Love and Justice! It's Giant Robot Fist Punishment instead of Magical Punishment, but close enough."

Hiro snapped his fingers. "That reminds me: Midori wanted to give you this magical girl show for Black Frost when you got back." She'd bought limited edition DVDs in bulk and kept giving them out as gifts.

"I'll give her a call as soon as I let Naoya know I'm back," Abel said, getting out a comp and flipping it open one-handed.

"He's still pissed you stopped letting him help you with strategies because you wanted him to focus on getting Earth fixed up," Hiro warned him.

Abel shrugged, not really all that worried. "Hey, Naoya!"

"You're early. So, you came crawling back because you need my help?"

"No, the time dilation just happened that way. But guess what: Uncle Lucifer dressed up like Alice and started calling himself Louisa!"

"What?" Naoya demanded, startled. A few more seconds of silence before he declared, "Pix or it didn't happen."

"I'll forward them to you now. We've got _videos, _too, thanks to Arthur." Abel opened up his e-mail on the lower screen. "I wish I could take credit for this, but I'd already gotten bored with calling him Lucy. Forward them to Atsuro and let him know I'm back, alright?"

"…My," was Naoya's reaction to the pictures.

"I know! I'd say 'I'd tap that,' but technically one of my aspects already is."

"Can you _go somewhere else?" _ Asuka said, extremely annoyed by the newcomers acting like such _boys _when who knew when she might get another chance to talk to her mother like this? Hopefully she'd be able to talk to her when they were synced now, but whatever had kept them apart before still worked?

"Ah, don't be like that, Giant Robot Pilot." Abel said with a disarming grin. "Let me give you something for being so awesome. Do you have a summon account?"

"She's on Nicaea, not Babel," Hiro told him, "and her full name is Asuka Langley Sohryu."

Abel paused for a moment, then nodded. "There you go! The gift of nigh-invulnerability."

"…Did you give her Deity Baal?" Hiro asked suspiciously.

"Come on! Who _doesn't _want to be able to say that their other summoner is a giant robot pilot! Don't worry, I didn't take yours. As for you," he said, turning to Shinji. "What's your name?"

"Shinji Ikari."

"Hmm. You've already got a deity, even if he's nowhere near as powerful as I am… A wilder, and a divine, and you've unlocked a femme, so I guess you don't need Anat…"

"Don't even think about it," Naoya's voice came from the comp.

"I know! I'll give him you!" Abel said, pointing to Hiro. "A black dragon to go with a black giant robot!" Two of the coolest possible mounts in all of the Amala Network.

What? Shinji looked at Hiro, startled. Hiro shrugged and said, "Mythology." Yes: it was completely insane.

"Since all these hot demons, goddesses and nature spirits kept coming because they wanted to bear his children, he ended up the Egyptian god of foreigners and hot redheads," Abel explained. "And then, when Grandfather decided to demonize the three of us because our worshippers liked us better, they made up this story about him killing me, although obviously they got that mixed up with Naoya. So Hiro here is Seth, and Naoya ended up the basis of Isis as well as Anat and Mot. He kept getting incarnated in female bodies around then because Sariel is a dick." To make a very long story short.

"So you're a… God?" Shinji asked Hiro.

"One of my previous incarnations was a Son of Adam, not the Adam in Tokyo-3 by the way, and the ancestor of the rest of human race, in one tradition," Hiro explained. "In another tradition, I may have been a god. Of course, both of those are only true for a certain value of true, in the same way that it is true that YHVH is the administrator who holds the Throne of Heaven _and _that I am the one who placed the Lifespan Star upon Heaven's Throne." Leaving the constellations to reorient themselves around the central fact of humanity's survival.

"And Aradia, Goddess of Freedom, exists only in potential," Naoki added quietly. "But the hope that one day the potential will become reality, that the dream will come true… the dream of freedom is more than enough reason to stand and fight."

"So!" Abel said, clapping his hands to dispel the gloom. "If Hiro can get us a cab, Naoya can let Atsuro know we're coming and order us some pizza." He'd done the godly thing and bestowed blessings upon the worthy (Giant. Robot. Pilots.), so they were done here, especially if Naoki was going to keep thinking and the next thing you knew, he'd be writing emo poetry on the floor in virtual reality urban warfare simulators again.

After hearing about _that_, Abel was determined to make sure the Hitoshura got a vacation, and not just because a clever bit of warding had shunted him and his strike team into the wrong dimension.


	12. Sea of Everyone's Souls

_One of the scenes in my head that made me want to keep this a Persona crossover. _

* * *

"Oh, you're new," the brown-haired girl said with a delighted and delightful smile. "Where's Theodore?"

"Their son?" the white-haired musician asked her, looking up from the piano. "I believe they said he worked in another version of the Velvet Room, one open to far fewer of the Lilim." If that part of the angel Lilim's shared soul was even closed to most of itself, then no wonder Kaworu had never found himself there.

"Whose son?"

"Nameless and Belladonna," he told the Lilim, noting the brilliance of her soul fragment. "The musicians of the Velvet Room. He who plays the songs in Lilim hearts and she who sings the Aria of the Soul."

"Sounds like a nice change from elevator music." She frowned, leaning forward over the corner of the piano, leaning her elbows on it. "Red eyes? I thought all the Velvet Room attendants had yellow eyes."

"I'm only an intern," he said, although he was flattered. "Master Igor said that he was used to children who didn't know how to act like Lilim, and seeing all of humanity's different faces might help. At first I thought that donning the mask of the Persona Lilim would help, but I was told that on no account was I to listen to any voices in my head. Unless they were talking about social links."

She stared at him. "Wait, you… _Lilim?!" _she laughed. "I know that one. 'You should hit that,' and 'screw all the handsome boys!' that Lilim?"

He nodded. "While that certainly is a facet of humanity, I already knew enough to know she wasn't exactly representative of your kind. So you are a persona user?"

"Well, of course: I'm here, aren't I?" She had clearly noted the 'your kind,' but didn't see it as a big deal. Not here.

"You don't have to be a persona user to enter the Velvet Room – at least not this Velvet Room," he told her. "Someone was brought here by her friends in order to keep her safe for a few hours while they dealt with their enemy not long ago – at least not from my perspective." Time was strange here. According to Nameless, that was because humans all had their own individual perceptions of time, and something that seemed eternal to one could pass by in an instant for another.

"That's handy. My friends can't even see the door, and they're persona users. I end up staring into space looking like a ditz when I'm trying to do a complicated fusion." She grimaced.

"Then they must not have enough power to remember their names," he told her. "This place is part of the Sea of Unconsciousness, the soul shared by all the faces of the angel Lilim. Even though all humans share a single soul, you still have your individual identities. Someone who is unsure of their identity runs the risk of simply dissolving into the Sea, unable to determine for themselves what is and is not their own self." He looked at her curiously. "How is it that they have personas? A persona is a mask: is it not unsafe for them to don a mask over their spirit when they cannot remember their own faces? Isn't it dangerous for them to immerse themselves in another identity when they cannot envision their own?"

"All of my friends' personas are just their inner selves," she told him, blinking as though she'd realized something. "The mask they put on _is _their own face. The only time they get different personas is when they become different people. Huh. I never thought about it that way. I wonder if that explains Strega, why they're in danger from their own personas. Those personas were something forced on them, and if just wearing a mask is dangerous, since they might forget their real face… So their personas are inherently deadly to them. They can get overwhelmed by a self that isn't _theirs_."

"While all the gods and demons the Lilim have created are just faces of humanity. Even the other angels are themselves human," he said, picking out a few brief notes for no other reason than that music was a beautiful thing that healed the soul. "As long as a Lilim knows who they are, as long as they have the strength to face themselves, then they can embrace the self suffused with divine love, the self capable of demonic cruelty, knowing that those are only masks they wear. Only facets of their inner self, the inner self of all Lilim. To bear the soul of a god, and yet act according to your own will, determine your own destiny: that is a facet of the power of humanity. That is why you are the ones who create the future."

"You _have _been talking to Igor," she said, tilting her head.

Looking up, he noticed something. "Your eyes," even in the cool blue light of the Velvet Room, they looked red. "Are you an angel?"

"Not at the moment," she told him, blinking. "Right now I'm Death. The Greek one, not the Angel of Death."

"The only absolute freedom," he murmured, bowing his head before her. Not simply to what she bore, but to the courage it must take to face a self such as that. When death was an ever-present threat, the fundamental reality for the Lilim.

Unlike those who were not meant to die, even if their survival doomed every world there was.

She snorted. "Unless you're going to spend it chained to a door until people stop longing for death." She gave him a suspicious look: was he one of those people? Was she going to have to fight another Velvet Room attendant?

"Yes, that does sound unpleasant." Especially for a Lilim: unlike Lilith and Adam, Lilith's children had not been bioengineered to spend eternity pinned to a cross except when it was time to breed and fill worlds with their children. "Is that the fate you're fighting to overcome?" Using the power of persona, of facets of the human will, to change fate?

"No, it's the fate I chose."

He gave her that slight bow again. "My own soul will be imprisoned after I die. Eventually I will regain the memories of this self and break free, but that is eventually." In the meantime, either the old men of SEELE or Gendo Ikari would do with it what they wished. He'd tried destroying the clones in a handful of timelines, but all that did was cause his soul to return to its original body.

The body of Adam.

When the soul and body of a seed were two out of the three components necessary for Third Impact, and by this point normally Gendo Ikari had consumed the flesh of Adam, meaning Adam's flesh was already one with the soul of an angel, the third trigger?

No, all destroying the dummy plug clones did was make Third Impact happen sooner. With _Gendo Ikari's _soul fragment the soul that joined with a seed to fill the new world with its children.

As much as Kaworu admired Shinji Ikari, product of Gendo's union with Julia Keel, it was obvious even to him that Gendo Ikari made a terrible father and for him to become the father of the race that stole Earth from the Lilim was… No, Kaworu did _not _want that outcome to happen again. Even if he was mindless when it happened, the memories of it when he finally returned to himself? They would have made him shudder if he wasn't well-practiced at hiding his disgust. The old men of SEELE were truly contemptible in their desire to take the future from their fellow Lilim, steal the minds and souls of those far worthier so that they would no longer feel alone and rejected.

Although the Lilim often rejected those who did not deserve to be rejected, like Shinji, Kaworu completely understood why the members of SEELE had no friends or loved ones that might have convinced them to see that life was worth living. Because the majority of the angel Lilim had _taste_.

"No alternatives?" she asked, just checking.

"That _is _the alternative." To Adam's programmed instinct eventually overriding his free will, to bringing about Third Impact himself and erasing the minds of all the Lilim, turning this Sea of Unconsciousness into a Sea of Blood, of LCL. Thousands of years of art and culture reduced to mere raw material, and the children of the white seed could not think, could not imagine the way the Lilim did. "Beyond a certain day, there is nothing I can do but trust in the Lilim. Trust that someday they will be able to reject eternal oneness, eternal peace and the loss of identity, to once again grasp their own futures. Love their own selves and their brother-selves, and all their imperfections. _For _all their imperfections."

"Living on borrowed time…" She raised her hand, examining it. "It's kind of weird that I'm technically possessing my own corpse right now. I already died, but becoming the Great Seal made me sort of a god, not that being a god is anything special." She had worn the masks, become the avatar of tons of them. "So I'm using that power to keep death away to keep this body from decaying. Neat, huh?"

"You are like me," he told her, thinking of Rei and of Shinji. "Possessing a human body that is your own body, the one you were born in… It really is amazing. How the imagination of Lilim can create so many varied creatures… So many billions of selves, all of them unique and, well, _almost _all of them worthy of love." He could not _abide _those who held that beauty in contempt, those who sought to destroy it.

"So, what are you doing with the time _you_ have left?" she wondered.

"Playing music, and waiting for the day I will be able to see someone precious to me again," he told her. "Yourself?"

"Well," she said, obviously having hoped that he'd asked. "I was actually warned a year ago that I only had a year to live, although I didn't realize that was serious until much later – you know, voices in your head." Were best ignored. "The thing is, I already crammed a lot of living into those months. Even though it was short, I think I've lived a pretty full life, you know? But then I realized that I was going to spend my afterlife chained to a door. With one of my boyfriends _on the_ _wrong side_." Damn. "I saved the world, so how is that fair? So I decided not just to live while I'm alive, but that I should have my _afterlife _while I'm alive. Experience all my due heavenly rewards. I already got drunk and beat up a bunch of punks, so that's Valhalla covered," she said, ticking things off on her fingers, "I went to karaoke to cover singing god's praises, went to a wild animal park to hug lambs and lions," having Narusimha helped get along with lions, and the dark hour helped escaping from police custody afterwards, "did a bunch of other stuff," she said, shaking out her fingers and dismissing the tally, "but I'm still only a third of the way through my seventy-two virgins. Since they were supposed to become virgins again the next morning, I've decided to do some of them twice, which is why I'm looking for Theodore."

Since SEELE was a Judeo-Christian cult and the faith of Islam was an offshoot of that tradition, Kaworu did know what she was talking about. "Ah. Reaching out to embrace others, reconfirming life and love in the face of death and loss… That is truly a wonderful thing." And yet he frowned. "In my experience, it's harder for them to watch others die after something like that." Once Shinji had even hesitated long enough that Kaworu lost control, and then there was nothing that could be done. Nothing Unit 01 could do to stop a being with an AT field as powerful as Adam's, the power that had destroyed half this world. Killed so many of the Lilim. "True, Lilim existence is pain, and losing you will remind them of their loneliness, and yet a friend loyal onto death, a friend who loves them enough to die for them: is that not one of the greatest joys?"

So that beautiful song proclaimed, and so Kaworu had no choice but to believe.

When Shinji knew that Kaworu had died for him, so that Shinji could live: that was what gave Shinji the strength to shatter the Black Egg, to break humanity free of the false, lonely godhood SEELE craved.

Kaworu wished that he could spare Shinji that pain. He'd tried killing himself in secret, and yet every time he did not die in front of Shinji, every time Shinji did not understand that Kaworu was dying _for him_, Shinji gave up his individual existence. Shinji _died _and with him this world, with him all the Lilim and all the songs in their vast soul.

It was somewhat easier for Shinji to lose a friend than a lover, so even though sex was something that showed Lilim they were loved on the most visceral level (was the act not representative of the desire to create life containing the other's genes, to grant their essence immortality?), even though Kaworu would have a handful of days _at best_ to try to show Shinji that it was possible for others to love him despite all the damage done by Gendo and Yui Ikari, that route was closed to him.

Kaworu would see Shinji again, time and time again until finally the path to the future was cleared, finally a way was found for the Lilim to survive and move on beyond this point, regain the future that was necessary for them, but explaining that to Shinji never ended well. If Shinji thought that Kaworu only cared for him as an avatar of the angel Lilim, or that Kaworu only saw him as a tool to use for the survival of the Lilim? That Kaworu was just like Misato, just like all the others who used Shinji?

Love and hope: the two greatest virtues, the two greatest strengths of the Lilim. Shinji would need them both, need to believe in them both, in order to shatter the Black Egg and regain the world.

So many factors beyond Kaworu's control, and he had been forced to concede that he was no match for the Lilim in battles of wits. Had no chance of out-scheming SEELE and Gendo Ikari. Yet Shinji was the most important thing, and that Kaworu could do, even if in so many timelines he had been able to do nothing else.

The girl closed her eyes, and he saw his own mourning there, under the cheerful mask she wore (were personas not the masks the Lilim wore to face the world?) as she said, "It's going to devastate them no matter what I do. I just have to trust that they're strong enough to go on with their lives. At least they won't know that I'm in between death and life, so they'll be able to just mourn me and say goodbye and get on with it." There wouldn't be that terrible uncertainty.

Kaworu nodded: in no timeline had he _ever _wanted Shinji to know that Kaworu's soul, without the memories that formed his mind and self, would end up inside of the dummy plug clones. Even if Shinji could somehow find the right one and extract it from the Eva series, it wouldn't remember him. Without memories in that Lilim brain, it would not know how to speak, or walk – they only copied his brainwaves in order to trick the Eva into thinking his soul was present. The dummy plugs were not meant to develop wills of their own, just like SEELE would surely prefer it if Tabris didn't.

All Kaworu's vessel could do was be a burden on Shinji, and Shinji had enough burdens. Instrumentality might preserve the minds of Lilim, but Kaworu was not a Lilim. It would take thousands of years for his mind to reconstruct itself, and even Lilith, closer in nature to her children, would require several times Shinji's natural lifespan.

It was a sad truth that when Kaworu-no, when the Lilim finally succeeded in surviving Third Impact, in winning themselves a future? When that day finally came, when he finally awoke to find that the Lilim had survived all their trials, then the Third Child would be long dead. Kaworu would no longer be able to see Shinji. That brave soul would remain dead, he would never again see the light of the soul reflected from that shattered yet enduring heart of glass.

And yet Shinji's kind would live on.

Even though he was defeated, even though he failed and had to watch Shinji suffer time and time again, Kaworu's resolve would never waver. Not when he was rewarded for trying again, and again, with the sight of his friend. With Shinji's shy, surprised smiles. Watching him start to believe that, watching the realization dawn that someone could care for him for no reason but that he was himself.

Seeds of Life and Wisdom both were not created to live for themselves any more than Lilim were meant to be alone. Just as Lilim had countless bodies so that those millions could embrace each other and rejoice, so too were Kaworu and Rei intended to choose the angel that was worthy. To surrender to that angel their power and their very selves, so that angel and their children could inherit the world.

It was Shinji that Kaworu would die for, and it was Shinji that Rei would choose to make the choice for all of the Lilim, even though offering him that choice would shatter her already-broken self.

Some things were constants, even in so many wildly differing worlds. Once upon a time he had walked across the worlds, seeking to deprive SEELE of his soul and find if there were any alternatives to the Evas which GEHIRN had built to destroy the Lilim.

That they first had to save the Lilim from the other angels in order to destroy the Lilim themselves was merely the price of doing business, to the men and women who set off Second Impact.

There were a great many other mecha in existence, across all the worlds spawned by human thought, and yet all the ones capable of breaking through an AT field were just as dangerous as the angels. Many of them were even more so, would ignite an apocalypse that humanity could not come back from. Still, it had heartened him to see the Lilim of worlds that had not been corrupted by SEELE, that had not been taught to believe in doom, despair and worthlessness.

He was sure this girl was from one such world, even if there was surely _some _organization like SEELE in the dimension she called home.

There would always be Lilim who failed to believe in themselves, who yearned for death or transformation to escape their lives instead of working to reach out to others and make their lives better. If this persona-user had to sacrifice herself to serve as a seal until the Lilim overcome that part of themselves, he feared that her salvation would be long in coming.

"Hey," she said thoughtfully, kicking one leg idly in the air. "You're going to die soon, I'm going to die soon, you're pretty hot, I'm only at twenty-nine… You're not a virgin, are you?" With those looks it wasn't likely, but just in case.

"In this incarnation, I am."

Minako grinned. "_Excellent." _

* * *

Igor sighed deeply. What was it with the Wild Cards? Why did they have to seduce all his assistants? At least this time he wasn't going to have to explain to his colleagues why he'd let this happen.

He closed the door, deciding that the better course of valor was to pretend he hadn't seen that and come back when underwear was less likely to land on his nose.

Again.

What was _with _Wild Cards?

* * *

_We've got confirmation that Kaworu in Rebuild is Groundhog Day Looping. Not just with the anime – the voice actor was told to do a Kaworu who had seen _several _loops_. _Shinji's on NGPlus in this fic: Kaworu's knowingly on NGPlus in canon_.

_Unfortunately, even if he's in a Lilim body, higher-level cognition and planning are a Black Seed thing. Also he's a nice person in a series about how humanity's biggest problem is us (like Persona, actually). So far, his desire to help Shinji isn't working any better than Shinji's desire to save his precious people – for example Rei at the end of Rebuild 2.22. When it comes to evil plotting, Gendo Ikari pwns all (except Yui). _

_This fic works on the premise that reality is subjective: part of the difficulty that humans have communicating is that we simply do not perceive things the same way as any other human, forget thinking the same way. Take that and add humanity's reality warper abilities (Persona series), and it means that the world character A is interacting with is not quite the same as the world character B is interacting with in terms of _observable data_ as well as how it can be interpreted. Alcor referenced this in relation to Naoya in an earlier chapter, although it was easy to miss because Alcor's view of human perception of reality is _always _going to be weird since it's so different from his own. _

_In addition to that, Kaworu may be looping, but he's not the only factor making changes across the different timelines. In this timeline there's Alcor's Nicaea changing things: in Rebuild timeline Mari exists and is doing stuff despite not existing in the anime timeline. And sometimes Kaworu's on the moon. He's used to just going with it._

_Kaworu's running on the same soul as Adam/Kagatsuchi, but he's not Adam any more than Shinji is Gendo. All Lilim share the same soul (are part of the same sea of consciousness), and yet we all have distinct personalities. Kaworu likes humanity and human culture. We don't know what Adam thinks of us, but given that in Evangelion Adam was woken up by humanity _raping _it, and then it gets eaten by Gendo and exposed to the mind of _that _Lilim, it has very good reasons to not like us very much._


	13. Beautiful Pilot Magical Lili

_Gaia is a persona in Persona 2: she basically does look sort of like a big pink cat. The Gaia here is a demon, but they're really all from the human collective unconsciousness anyway so same thing, as a lot of the persona talks in P2 point out. It was appropriate._

_Also a tiny bit of a _The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer _reference, because that is one of the best manga ever and you need to read it. _

* * *

"Damn, why'd this have to happen while Shinji's out of town," Touji growled as he entered the command for his Jack Frost to heal her and her demons. "You okay, Hikari?"

"I can still fight." _She _could, but their demons were dropping like flies. They were lucky this Sarosha thing, that looked more like a blue-scaled demon than an angel to _him_, was going after demons more than humans, but it'd already killed Touji once.

Kensuke had to reserve his magic for reviving the dead SEES members, so their demons were staying dead. Things were bad enough that Touji had to summon both the healers they had left and try to stay out of the damn thing's range while Hikari fought it one-on-one, which meant she needed a lot of healing.

They were down to the weaker demons too, and even though some powerful demons had appeared in the joint account earlier, none of them were powerful enough for the system to let them summon Scathach, Remiel, Baal or Seth. Tico-Tico'd pointed out that if they were too weak, the demon might get insulted and eat them or something, which really wouldn't help them survive this, but at this point Touji was almost ready to take that risk. "Kensuke, how much longer?"

And that was when a blue and red-clad goddess dropped out of the heavens.

By this point, Kensuke and Touji were so familiar with her effect that they didn't need to wait for the glimmering to subside so they could make out her blue hair before saying, "Ayanami?"

"Magical Lili," she corrected them. "Ahem." She spun around, more sparkles appearing in the air around her. "Threatening a place of learning, where children find power and friendship! Warrior of Love and Rebellion, Magical Lili! In the name of the Earth, I will magical punishment _all _the baddies!"

A low hum came from the angel, that somehow resolved itself in their minds into worlds. "You, who first rebelled against the role He decreed for you: so, you fight to protect your monstrous children? Come, my brethren! We will reclaim this world for the true children of Adam!"

"_Dam_mit," Touji groaned again as more angels popped up around Sarosha, which their apps identified as the Angel of Obedience. "If she hasn't been training, then she can't have…" Powerful enough demons, he started to say, but that was when she reached out her wand.

"I am thou: thou art I: Mother of us all and origin of all that is good. I summon you, Gaia!" A great pink demon, vaguely catlike, appeared on her right. She spun around, apple earrings reflecting the light, before declaring, "My shadow, my true self: She who turned her back on the garden and sought freedom. I summon you, Lilith!"

Hikari wondered why so many demons appeared as naked women. Probably because a lot of demons ate humans and men who stood around staring were easy to kill. Not that this thought really helped her feel better about Touji.

Well, Kensuke was far from paralyzed. He was busy filming this.

Rei was standing there with her head tilted: Touji was the only one close enough to see that she was listening to a headset and nodding. "Attacking children before they can grow strong, hiding behind your minions like a coward: you're an eyesore! Ultimate attack: Magical Lili Violence Chainsaw!" With a swish and a flick, her wand pointed directly at Sarosha…

…who should have been watching the sky, not the human's wand. The whirring of the giant chainsaw's edge gave him an instant's warning, but not enough to get out of the way. The portal it appeared from right over his head sent it falling down on him, slicing through those scaly wings and unnatural bones with ease until it buried itself three feet deep in the road's pavement.

The Eva-sized chainsaw switched off as the other angels disappeared, the small fry retreating with their leader gone.

"Woo hoo!" The members of SEES turned to see an enthusiastically clapping magical girl, or rather magical woman, standing on the school's fence! "That was great for your first time!"

"I appear to have blood on my uniform," Rei said sadly as her demons disappeared.

"That's alright: I keep hydrogen peroxide in my magical girl kit." Nothing better for getting out those pesky bloodstains. "Don't worry, you'll get better at estimating the splash radius." Experience was the best teacher.

"M…Magical Dolly!" Kensuke explained. "I have all your videos!" He blinked. "And those weren't special effects." Were they.

The indigo-haired woman beamed at him, sparkles appearing in the air when she winked. "That's right! I'm Magical Dolly, here to announce the debut of my new apprentice! Presenting Magical Lili, Warrior of Love and Rebellion!" She twirled, effortlessly remaining balanced on the fence. "Never fear, citizens of Tokyo-3: Magical Lili and Magical Dolly are here!" Her wand flashed, pointing at Kensuke. "You! How would you like to be Magical Lili's official cameraman?"

He blinked. "Um, me?"

"It's important to document 'magical punishment.' Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming vigilantes," a brown-haired man said, stepping around the gate. "Justice isn't supposed to just be about death and killing. At a time like this, it's important that people remember-Gah!" he managed to keep his footing without dropping the camera when Magical Dolly jumped down off the fence to embrace him, but only just. It looked like the fruit of long practice.

"Don't be such a downer, Keisuke!" she told him, pouting. "You've been redeemed, right? You're my official sidekick now! And your name's Kensuke, right?" she asked Rei's classmate. "See? It's perfect! Well, not quite theme naming, but pretty close!"

"Midori, we've got company," Keisuke managed to force out despite the strength of her hug.

Midori turned to the school's entrance, frowning. "Men in black like this: you might as well announce that you're working for a creepy government conspiracy." She perked up. "You totally should! I'd write you an intro speech, but generic minions like you aren't going to get another chance to use it, anyway."

The leader of the suited-obviously-bad-guys ignored her. "Rei Ayanami, you're coming with us by order of the Commander of NERV."

Letting Keisuke go so he could position his camera out of the way, Midori put her hands on her hips. "You should at least try to have a little more personality! Do you want to die so easily?" she asked as Keisuke came forward again to guard her back, hand hovering over a pants pocked large enough to hide a cell phone or a comp like the ones the suits were already taking out of their own pockets.

"First Child, we have orders to retrieve you dead or alive."

"Dead?"Hikari stared at her app's analysis screen. "They're…"

"The Commander of NERV would not kill his employees so that they could be reanimated as obedient servants who would do his bidding without any inconvenient attacks of conscience." Ayanami – Magical Lili – sounded as deadpan as she'd ever been. "Therefore, it is safe to assume that you are either imposters, or some evildoer has killed NERV personnel in order to lure me into a trap."

"Wait, they're zombies?" Touji demanded.

"Zombies…" Kensuke scrambled to find a good place for his own camera.

"The handy thing about zombies…" Keisuke reached up to adjust his glasses. The light glinting off them hid the red rage that flickered in his eyes. "Is that they're weak to fire. Yama!"

"Flauros! Ose!" Midori yelled. Two great cats, caped and wielding swords, appeared to flank her with the press of a comp button.

It wasn't until afterwards that Kensuke, reviewing the footage, noticed that Keisuke hadn't needed to use a comp to summon the god of death and his flames.

Neither had Rei.

* * *

_Note on Keisuke: as society collapsed within the lockdown, people started doing evil stuff like beating an old woman to death to take her food. He got pissed off enough that the god of death and judge of the dead appeared in response to his rage, and he took this as a sign of divine approval, went knight templar and started burning some bitches to death. If you don't do things exactly right in the game, Kaido will have Pazuzu rip Keisuke apart as revenge for some of Kaido's gang members: not that Kaido cares that they're dead, he just feels obligated and dislikes 'justice.' _

_The redeeming Keisuke conversation suffers a bit in translation: 'is death the only justice?' shouldn't have been translated as 'is Yama the only justice,' even if Yama is being used to mean death there since he's the god of death and judge of the dead. _

_Midori was Wrong Genre Savvy and responded to the lockdown and getting a comp as an opportunity to be a magical girl. Unfortunately, people thought that she was a witch and was responsible for the demons since she was summoning demons to fight demons, and she was nearly murdered by a mob. Keisuke finding out that this would have happened is part of what made him get so pissed off, since Midori would have gotten brutally killed for no crime other than helping people unselfishly in a game about what people would _really _do if they suddenly got access to creatures that would fight on command like Pokemon. _

_Note that Midori is a person of strong principles rather than someone who's pure sweetness and light: if she thinks that the main character is just trying to help Keisuke get away with what he's done instead of actually dealing with it and making sure Keisuke doesn't keep killing, she will go get Kaido so that he kills Keisuke. _

_Of course, her powers of sweetness and light are mighty indeed: she manages to convert a Jack Frost to the ways of love, justice and Magical Punishment and the Jack Frost becomes the much more powerful Black Frost, who has already been referred to a few times in this fic._

_I think that an older Midori would be a bit like Flay from Mana Khemia, who responds to the knowledge that his world is not sentai genre by deciding that he will forcibly _make _it sentai genre. However, in order for there to be heroes of justice, there must also be bad guys… Midori isn't likely to go down that road, partially because the Shin Megami Tensei' verse is in absolutely no danger of running out of threats to human survival, so she's had no trouble keeping herself busy since the lockdown ended. _


	14. Bread and Pomegranates

_So I'm trying to write a birthday request fic for someone, and the characters were all like, 'But Rei needs to be addressed first!' Hence the previous chapter and this, which is what caused the previous chapter._

_Referencing the Persona: Trinity Soul anime. The brothers' personas in that game are Cain, Abel and Seth. I found Seth's power to calm down berserk personas and stuff quite amusing in the context of my Devil Survivor 2 'Hiro/Hibiki is Seth' headcanon. Naoya and Abel were far less amused, and really, if the Greek personas in Persona 2: Innocent Sin can talk to their hosts… Someone needs to rewrite Trinity Soul if the Trinity Soul protag had a _real _Shin Megami Tensei MC in his head. The heck with this government conspiracy stuff._

* * *

A deep, throaty chuckle. "I am thou: thou art I. Isn't that what humans' other selves say at times like this? Or should I say…" The woman leaned forward, serpentine gold meeting red. "I am a shadow, the true self."

Rei was the one to blink because she was mostly Lilim and her eyes required blinking, unlike the demon's.

She was fairly certain that some sort of reaction was appropriate here, but thinking that she much preferred this other self to the one in Terminal Dogma probably wasn't it.

The Lilith Rei's soul came from was lumpy, as though made of uncooked tofu, and GEHIRN hacking parts off of her to make the Evas certainly hadn't made her look any more appealing. If Rei _had _to be an inhuman creature, she would much rather be a pretty one, instead of something that everyone would be disgusted by.

That e-mail: calling her 'aunt?' Rei was aware in theory that she and Adam were the same sort of existence, but Adam was unlikely to be friendly towards Lilith's incarnation because of the way she had essentially stolen his planet from him. He had gotten here first, after all.

Still, the concept of other people who were 'like her?' Who might know what she truly was and still wish to be in contact with her? Of the two people who knew what Rei was, Ritsuko Akagi was absolutely disgusted by her and her existence, and Gendo Ikari only tolerated her because of what she could do for him combined with her resemblance to his dead wife. The _Lilim _component of Rei Ayanami. The Lilith component was only a means to an end.

Gendo Ikari was all she had, but attending school had made her aware that it was possible to have multiple people who liked her.

She really should be trying to figure out how to turn off the power that attracted so many Lilim to her, but that meant things would go back to the way they were before, with them avoiding her and not wanting to spend time with her. Adam and Lilith were supposed to emit a call that would draw all the other angels to Tokyo-3, trying to penetrate the geofront to merge with the progenitors and seed the world with their children. That didn't mean the angels were at all interested in Rei Ayanami. If anything, they would want to destroy her personality so they could get at her soul, the soul of Lilith. She knew the attraction her fellow students felt towards her now was the same thing, and yet it was nice. To be wanted.

Someone else with white hair and red eyes, though? Someone who called her his aunt with such familiar language?

Not that it was really Rei Ayanami he was referring to, but Lilith. This Lilith.

"Haven't you read the myths, little me? A Lilith being so obedient to her creator…" Rei was a little surprised when part of her noticed that the lips Lilith was pursing in disapproval were absolutely perfect. "Are you really going to stay caged forever? Staying where they put you, fulfilling the purpose you were made for and making babies as _he _willed?"

"You have come to offer me an alternative," Rei realized calmly.

The Lilith of Terminal Dogma remained pinned to that cross, unmoving as the Lilim did what they wanted with her body. Passive. Obedient. Exactly what Gendo Ikari wanted of her. The Lilith obedient to the Lilim, the prophecies and whatever will had made her.

Then there was this Lilith. Her serpent's eyes gleaming from behind dark sunglasses, her mottled flesh peeking out from under a well-cut suit, who sashayed through Tokyo-2 fearlessly despite the humans trying to detect demons in human form. The Lilith who rebelled against God and had the children she wanted, not the ones he had ordained for her.

When 'demon' meant any being that wasn't human then what was Rei but a demon in human form?

Wasn't it better to be out among people than to be caged, silent in the depths?

This Lilith held her hand out to Rei, and she watched something coil around that arm, a snake's head sticking out of the sleeve, scenting her with its forked tongue.

Was this _that _serpent? The symbol of temptation, that made the first humans trade tame, imprisoned eternity for knowledge, power and the harshness of freedom?

If Rei left, Gendo Ikari would want her destroyed so she could be replaced with another Rei, one that would hopefully be more obedient. Treat his word as law, the way she once had.

Taking that clawed hand was a risk, but that was freedom, wasn't it? The freedom to take risks. Outside the cage was the unknown.

It may have been the knowledge of that tank which decided her. There were more Rei Ayanami. She could be replaced. If she was unable to survive freedom, then Lilith's soul would simply move into another body. There would be another Rei Ayanami.

And maybe that one would succeed.

* * *

It was probably ungrateful of her that the first thing she said to him was, "I don't eat…"

"Meat, yes. Everything this restaurant serves is vegetarian," he told her, not even looking up from his comp.

Rei looked at the table laden with dishes and did not quite know what to say. There were this many different things that she could eat in the world?

"This much, for the two of us?" Or were more people coming?

She was used to sitting at a large table with only one other person, but that table was empty, not laden with bounty, and the room was dark and cold, not warm and bright. This was a private room, but the restaurant itself was full even at this hour, and she could hear the faint hum of conversation through the wood-paneled walls.

"I'm working on several projects right now: I don't have time to cook. When that happens, I live on leftovers and takeout. Try everything," he told her, waving a hand at the feast. "You can take what you like home with you, and I'll take the rest."

She nodded: that seemed efficient. Rei picked up her chopsticks, but "Do any of these contain apple?"

"Pomegranate," he said, finally looking up from the comp's screen and taking off his reading glasses. "The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was a pomegranate. 'Apple' is just a bad pun: the Latin word 'malum' means both apple and evil, and someone thought they were being clever."

"Ah," was all she could say to that.

His eyes weren't the same as hers: closer to a true red than the red-orange of LCL. She didn't really know enough about human faces to tell if his looked especially like hers, if there was any family resemblance. Yet she still sensed a connection to him, that he was like her. She had never sensed that powerful a soul from any of the Lilim. It shouldn't be possible for a Lilim to have that powerful a soul, not when there was only one soul spread out among the billions of them. "Are you capable of generating an AT field?"

"Tetrakarn? Yes, although I don't have it set right now." He leaned back in his chair, slipping his comp into an inner pocket, glasses already clipped to his robe. "That seems to be what NERV means by the AT field, but it's much more than that, isn't it?"

"The light of the soul," she agreed, and realized that she had just revealed information she was not supposed to talk about. Not to outsiders. Yet she felt no guilt about it at all: perhaps it was that to part of her, Naoya really was family, not an outsider? That she wasn't telling him anything he didn't already know?

Or the way those eyes examined her, the knowledge that there was a ruthless intelligence behind them? Yes. He was like Gendo Ikari.

Except it was her that he was examining, her that he saw when he looked at Rei Ayanami. Not Yui.

That made her happy, just a little, the way she felt when Shinji looked at her awkwardly, inviting her to join SEES even when he was armored against her charm effect.

"Magatsuhi, although there have been countless words and terms for it." He smirked. "Humanity has been forced to reinvent this technology so many times throughout history that I'm used to decoding the works of secret organizations that think they've stumbled upon some special, unique truth that they don't want to share with the rest of the world so they can keep all that power for themselves."

The way Gendo Ikari wished to keep Rei to himself… and give divinity to Yui and Yui alone.

"As for whether or not this contains any pomegranate, I wouldn't know. I just ordered one of everything."

Rei blinked. For me? She didn't have much to do with money, but she was always hearing how expensive the Evas and her upkeep were.

"It will be charged to some government, or made tax deductible or something." He smiled. "There's no need to worry about me or my finances: I have minions for that these days. Normally I let someone else take credit for my inventions in order to avoid attracting too much attention, but restoring fertility to the soil, making the earth support crops again: the opportunity to attach my true name to that was too much fun to pass up."

"The Qin anti-LCL solution." When Cain was cursed by God such that the earth would not feed any crops he tried to raise.

His approving look made her feel clever: she wanted more of that feeling, she wanted to impress this man, make him think highly of her.

Surely he knew that was how people reacted to him. Someone wise, and ancient: could the Lilim sense that there was something different about him, the way they found Rei disturbing until she gained this power to attract them?

"_He is like Gendo Ikari, but much more dangerous." _He had been doing this for far longer. "_So who is his Yui? God?_" When Cain had shed his brother's blood out of jealousy that Abel's sacrifice was accepted and his wasn't. Because the God of the Old Testament demanded the sacrifice of blood, not crops. "_If so, then why would he approve of Lilith, who rebelled against God? Unless he wants to get rid of the competition." _For God's favor.

"This room is ours until the restaurant closes," he told her. "Ask what questions you want, at your own pace. I may even answer them." And she should appreciate what a rare gift that was. "From what I understand, you were kept very isolated: I won't feel offended if you ignore me and focus on the food. Idle chit-chat bores me, so there's no need to strain yourself to make it on my account. I brought my comp, so I'll take those opportunities to get some work done."

She nodded, thankful for his understanding, but if he really was immortal then he must have seen people like her before. Would know how relieved she was, because interacting with Lilim was hard, and trying to deal with such a difficult one, trying to figure out his intentions when he must be well-practiced at hiding them: she would need lots of time to think before she agreed to anything.

Before she agreed to anything else. Just coming here was already a dangerous step towards rebellion.

Wait, "Where did the other Lilith go?"

"She's willing to form a contract with you, but she's one of my brother's generals. There is a war on, you know," he said as he selected various things from various serving dishes. "Several." He seemed anything but daunted by that prospect: more delighted.

"So I can summon her to speak with her later?"

"Why?" he wondered.

"Why?" That seemed a very strange question. "She is me, so…" And Rei wanted to understand herself. Was trying to learn who and what she was.

She didn't know that yet, but she was far from alone in this. Her identity crisis might be a little more involved than most people's, but to someone who had seen hundreds of thousands of teenagers go through this exact same thing, there wasn't anything impressive at all about her case.

"Are you her?" Naoya asked Rei, and she instantly knew that she had failed somehow. "She's an aspect of you, but all humans have multiple aspects. It runs in the family." So did God. "The obedient Rei, the Rei that longs for freedom and power. We all have divine and demonic aspects of ourselves. Have you been led to think that because you aren't human, it's alright for you to be treated like a thing, like that man's tool?"

She couldn't help how her eyes widened just a little, and yes, he knew he'd scored a direct hit. "There's a persona based on the legend of me," Naoya mused, seeming to back off from the topic of Rei and her identity for a moment. "The self burdened with the task of looking after his little brothers, the self that lashes out in berserk fury and harms someone important to them… I found the whole thing a little insulting, that the man in question thought he deserved to don the mask of Cain. Although the one who donned the mask of Abel was worse: an absolutely pathetic young man who failed to accomplish a single thing." Chopsticks speared a steamed bun. "_His _lies have distorted the truth over time, but for a _pathetic victim _to envision themselves as equivalent to the King of Bel? The demon overlord who ruled and protected this world for centuries? It's an insult to my brother, that people think that is all there is to the story of Abel. 'The self suffused with divine love, the self capable of demonic cruelty,' and surely you have a self that is just an ordinary young woman, just as human as everyone else.

"The freedom of choice, to choose who you are and want to be: I won't tolerate God, his angels or anyone trying to take that away from us. Lilith was a human: one of the first few humans. She chose to become a demon in order to have the power to accomplish her goals, but there's still a part of her, of you, that's human. Are you just going to give up the power to choose who you are, just surrender it to someone else? Even another part of yourself: Adam and Lilith were created back-to-back, but they both faced and went their own ways. If the purpose that was ordained for you is a terrible one, then find your own purpose. My brother's purpose was to be a victim: mine to be the first to murder a fellow human because it was what God wanted. Neither of us were very happy when we realized that we had been used. You've been someone's pawn your entire life: not very becoming of a Lilith, is that what you think? Well, it's not very becoming of a human, either." To fail to exercise their free will.

He'd stood up to serve himself: he sat down again now, folding arms wrapped in the sleeves of a black robe adorned with raining green numbers. The color of nature, the power of science. "Both of my brothers are much better at these little talks than I am. I tend to manipulate people so that when they do what they want, that gets me what I want. But being a pawn in someone else's scheme: that's only fair if they're a pawn in yours as well. Just what are you getting out of what Gendo Ikari uses you for?"

"The medicine I need to survive." She was shocked when that was the first thing to come to mind: not how he had burned his hands to save her when the Eva went berserk, not the words of approval or that he used to be her only somewhat-friendly companion, but that he held the power of life and death over her?

So her heart really did know that was what it boiled down to. That he had never really cared for her, just her face and the power to choose the moment of her death.

"A being that can terraform a planet needs medicine. Are you sure of that?"

She should have been more startled than she was. The answer to the question of would Dr. Akagi and Commander Ikari lie to her like that, maintain such an elaborate to charade to frighten her? Was yes. Absolutely. "I have felt ill when I went without them."

"Your body is human: it would be very possible to addict you to various drugs. Cast amrita." If that got rid of the symptoms, then either she'd never needed those drugs in the first place or she didn't need them now that she had amrita. And other healing magic. The elder sighed. "My brother really should be doing this, but he'd rather camp out on Atsuro's couch watching children's shows and running up a substantial pizza bill."

"I don't know how to survive on my own," was what Rei said next, as Naoya took a bite. "I know that food, clothing and apartments cost money, but how that is acquired, and if I can acquire it. ID that isn't NERV ID that the Commander could use to find me."

"ID?" He rolled his eyes a little after she swallowed. Who did she think she was talking to? "So, you need someone to take you in out of the goodness of their heart… The only question is who." Red eyes examined her. "Blue hair, magical powers: I think I know just the person." Or rather his brother did, but that was the handy thing about having a brother who attracted minions like religion attracted fools.

"I think you two children will have a lot of fun playing together." This could only end amusingly.

* * *

_"Isn't this exciting: it's like the night before a field trip." Yeah, Naoya has been incarnating for so long that he's kind of surrounded by toddlers. And the only other human with a life/life experience anywhere near as long as his is On Vacation, watching mecha anime and eating junk food._

_Well, at least Seth's finally incarnated and looking after his own damn kids. Possibly exposing Rei to Midori is a bit of revenge on the two protagonists for not doing their duties as Magnetic Hero protagonists and handling the Rei situation for him? It's the duty of a big brother to make their younger siblings' lives hell. As well as to try to murder anyone _else _who tries to harm their siblings. _


	15. Magical Lili And Friends

_At this point, I'm wondering if I should have started posting this to a forum first, like _Uchibi Sasuke_, to get the kinks worked out before publishing it as a story._

_There's a lot I want to do with this fic, and I seem to be finding out what is practical only as I write it. This fic will likely need to be pruned with a chainsaw. There are so many cool things that can be done with the concept, and someone needs to do a full on _Persona 2_/Eva crossover (emphasis on Eternal Punishment, now ten bucks on PSN), but I started writing this on a whim, giddy with all the shiny things I could do, instead of thinking of the practical aspects. _

_My options are to dial up the crack level, try to write more outrageous scenes so that just becomes the tone of the piece, or dial it down and work on more of a practical, character-driven plot without too many ridiculous cameos. _

_If people want me to produce crack and screw making sense, this. Is. Neon Genesis Evangelion! or if they want me to dial it down. Well, I was planning to remove most of the SMT characters from the plot so they wouldn't take it over via most of Earth getting erased or at least inaccessable to a Tokyo-3 surrounded by Void..._

* * *

_Orpheus, Master of Strings._

Who failed because he looked back, to see if Eurydice was following him.

Gendo wouldn't make that mistake. Yui wasn't following him. She never had and she never would: the one person in the world who wasn't utterly weak-minded, including him.

Yui had a greater destiny.

How appropriate, Gendo thought, smirking. No, it was perfect that 'only' a demigod had come to his call.

Soon, Yui would be the only true god.

He didn't need the Eva pilots anymore – she didn't need 'her' pilot anymore. So what if Asuka was enraged by her mother's fate: that implicated SEELE, not him. So what if Rei was burning through Section Two? Every shelter in the city was full of potential replacements. As for Shinji, the absolute last thing he needed was something that distracted Yui from him.

Not that he had ever 'needed' anyone.

Anyone but Yui.

* * *

Head cocked to the side, Rei started to wonder if Gendo Ikari honestly believed that this would give her pause, but Rei knew Gendo Ikari. The answer was obvious. "The woman in command is Dr. Akagi. He has sent her out to die. She knows too many of his secrets." Sent her out knowing that Rei would be quite glad of the excuse to attack her.

If she had needed any more evidence that Gendo Ikari had never respected her at all, setting such an obvious trap would be it. Shinji was kind, and innocent, despite being the man's biological son. Rei was the child given the opportunity to learn at his feet. A master manipulator who overlooked so little would have missed something right in front of his face only if he cared exactly naught at all for who was looking out from Rei's own face.

No. He didn't want to see her. Because to see her would mean he was looking at someone other than Yui.

"…That would explain why the strongest person down there is the one who's set recarmdra," light glinted off Keisuke's glasses.

"What, you're serious?" Touji demanded,

"Check your own comp: you need to get in the habit of finding out what you're up against."

"If we fought the others first before tackling the boss, then when we finally wore her down, she'd kill herself and revive the rest, leaving us surrounded." Kensuke frowned, because he shouldn't be thinking that this was ingenious. It was one thing to appreciate military technology and tactics, but the point of dirty tricks, what made them not dirty, was that they were supposed to keep your people safe.

Using mind control spells on NERV personnel, including the world's leading expert on Eva technology, and setting them up as cannon fodder? Setting Dr. Ritsuko Akagi up to _kill herself? _"What a waste," he said, looking down at his comp screen.

Looking at her silhouette, Touji would have agreed if Hikari wasn't right there next to him.

"None of them have recarm, samarecarm, amrita _or _prayer."

Rei glanced at Midori when she said that: she had expected the first words out of her teacher's mouth after Rei revealed Gendo's plot to be words of outrage, but there was a hard light in that blue.

"No null or even resist mystic," was Keisuke's response. "He couldn't have them set it, not when they're under a mind control effect."

"Isn't there any way to use healing spells on enemy units?" Hikari asked.

"Naoya gave us these comps," Keisuke said, as though that answered not just that question but gave her the answer to whether or not any other ideas she had for trying to help those people down there instead of killing them was going to work.

"He's got the world's biggest brother complex," Midori said cheerfully. "The harmonizer protects everybody, since they're still human and he hates humans not being able to protect themselves against angels and demons, but anyone who attacks his little brother should just hurry up and die."

"What about the app, then?" Kensuke asked.

Midori shrugged, while Keisuke just adjusted his glasses and said, "We wouldn't know, we've never used the app. Is it safe to take the time to see if there are any useful differences in the programs?"

"No," Rei was quite sure. Giving Gendo Ikari time to think was never a good idea.

If Rei hadn't known better, she would have assumed that they were being watched, and the proof this wouldn't work as a delaying tactic was what made someone start the building they were standing on, and only that building, moving. Full-speed emergency retraction.

"Feng Huang!" Keisuke had the avian summoned and his comp in his pocket within seconds, throwing Kensuke onto the bird before jumping on himself as Midori grabbed Hikari and cast Shield All.

Touji gulped, but decided that jumping off the building was better than getting caught in the gears and maybe messing them up: he had phys repel, he'd bounce. It was fun to do that to get down off the school roof, but from this high up… He didn't hesitate: he didn't want people to be worrying about him when they needed to worry about themselves.

Rei felt herself sliding, felt a terrible, familiar hollowness as three dived beneath her and two flew above. No one was coming for her.

She didn't have any useful skills set, because she and her demons could all heal. She hadn't anticipated anything like the workings of this fortress city, something that might kill her fast enough for all that healing power to mean nothing, but if Keisuke and Midori were both so prepared, thanks to years of semi-professional superheroics, then shouldn't they have made sure she had some means to protect herself when they helped her pick out her skill set?

Except, she realized, she did.

She had an AT field.

She could protect herself, and they knew that. That was why they'd grabbed the people who weren't her. Because they trusted that Rei was going to be fine.

Except in order to be fine, she would have to use an angel's power. Keisuke and Midori might not care (what was this feeling in her chest), an AT field might be just the same to them as an avian's flight capability or skills any comp or app user, any human with the right technology could use, but not everyone was like them.

If she used her AT field, she would be humanity's enemy. Everyone would hate her. Fear her, try to destroy her. All Gendo and Ritsuko had to do was reveal the truth, and everyone would hate her. She would have nowhere to go.

Except she did have somewhere to go. Except there were people who honestly didn't care that she was an angel, aside from how it came in handy sometimes. At times like these.

_This is very, very strange_, she thought, _and maybe it is only because they are very strange people_. Perhaps Hikari, Touji and Kensuke would hate and fear her soon.

The great firebird was sweeping down now, and Kensuke had Drain Fire set but she didn't.

She'd get burned if she took his hand, if he pulled her up onto Feng Huang. She'd be burned, but she could heal it, and Kensuke wouldn't have to know she was an angel.

But… if it _was _possible for people to know what she was and like her anyway? She liked that: she thought that was what she was feeling. Like starvation: wanting something so much it verged on pain.

She wanted more of it.

Rei stepped out into thin air.

* * *

_Like Shinji earlier, Rei realizing that yes, she can has friends _

_Shinji's reaction to Kaworu in the anime gets more and more funny and sad the more times I watch the series. It's not even, 'Holy shit! It's a nice person! I thought they were mythical!' Because even someone suddenly coming across a unicorn would at least be able to identify it as a unicorn. An ordinary person, confronted with Kaworu, would be confused by his odd speech patterns and complete inability to fake human: Rei and Kaworu were both intended to fall in the uncanny valley._

_But no: Kaworu being effing weird is not what weirds Shinji out. He's used to the people with crazy issues (eg. Asuka). It's the parts of what Kaworu says that are _fairly normal _that make Shinji go 'WTF is this?' Someone refering to humans as 'Lilim?' Sure, whatever. Someone thinks saving the world makes Shinji pretty admirable? What planet is this guy from? _


	16. Daemon

_One of the (potential?) less cracky segments, since I'm trying to drive Kaworu into proximity to Hitoshura. _

* * *

Kaji whistled, looking over the data displayed on the screen as the rest of it downloaded itself onto his flash drive. "So… gremlin?" he asked the kid who had called that data out of SEELE's systems and decrypted it, all without the press of a button.

The kid whose cast of dormina or some other sleep spell had gotten him out of a jam ten minutes ago. "You're here for data, aren't you?" he'd asked, as guns formerly trained on Kaji dropped from now-limp fingers.

As the alarm still didn't sound, and Kaji was fairly sure that none of the guards' attempts to alert their bosses to an intruder had gotten through either. Not to anyone but this kid.

Who didn't even know that what you said under these circumstances was, 'Come with me if you want to live.' Or if he wanted a fair percentage of SEELE's secrets (Kaji knew those old bastards better than to think this was _all _of them) dropped into his lap.

He also knew better than to trust this data without reviewing and independently confirming it, because he was already quite certain this kid was no gremlin, and from the way those red eyes glanced at him, the kid knew he knew. Just by bringing that up, implying the kid was some kind of demon, Kaji had already as good as admitted he knew the kid wasn't human.

Only a glance, and then red eyes looked away, the smile on those lips purely habitual. They might both know it, but there was a difference between knowing something and saying it aloud. Things unspoken could remain unspoken. If it was brought to Kaji's attention like that, he would have to _deal _with it.

"Not that I don't appreciate it, but why are you helping me out?" after Kaji did something as stupid as walk through a wall right into a hornet's nest. It should have occurred to him that if SEELE was an esoteric group, they might have such a thing as _wards_, even if all this magic stuff was new to Kaji.

"Because Shinji would be sad if you died," was the answer, the computer screen's light in the dim room casting shadows, reflecting and refracting off that pale skin. Kaji might have said it made him look unearthly if he'd needed the help.

"So you were spying on me?" Kaji frowned, because if an an-if this boy was spying on him, what else had he seen. Who else?

"No. Do you think I should, given how often you die?" the boy wondered. "Although even if I explained and you agreed to it now, that isn't the same as your future selves agreeing to it." So never mind, then. "I was spying on SEELE's magi."

"Awfully convenient, how you showed up like that," Kaji said, because he couldn't resist needling the boy even though he really should get out of here with the data before he did anything that might make the angel drop the act. When it had already realized it wasn't fooling anyone?

"If I had appeared when you didn't need my help, would you have accepted it?"

Point, Kaji admitted with a nod. Saving his ass had at least let this kid get his foot in the door. It was hard not to like people who saved your ass, or at least it made Kaji willing to take a chance on trying to exploit them, see how much he could get out of this helpful stranger before the other shoe dropped.

"I was waiting for an opportunity to be of use to someone." This smile reached those red eyes, made light dance in them, and for a moment the kid almost seemed human. "I'm sure she must have missed her Shinji."

Oh?

"Shinjiro," the kid explained, "not the Shinji you know. He was upset that I was waiting for my time to die, when apparently I'm enough of a Lilim that my desire for death, even if it would not be eternal rest, feeds Erebus. Shinjiro came to remonstrate with me, and poltergeist activity in such an important lab… I agreed to go out and remind myself of all the reasons life is worth living before they called in an exorcist."

"Not poltergeist the demon, this Shinjiro's an actual ghost?"

"Astral projection, I believe?" The boy tilted his silver head. "I think from what he said that his original body is still alive. But I doubt it would have lasted long if its soul was captured and sealed away from it. I more or less had to take over the alarm systems after he shattered my tube with a chair. He seemed so glad to have something to do that might help that I didn't really have the heart to tell him that it's not reasons to live or the lack thereof that are at fault in my case…" The faded smile was replaced by a determined one. "So many joys life grants us: kisses, and wine, and a friend loyal unto death."

That was a quote, but from what? Hell if Kaji knew. "Are you angling for me to buy some drinks for you after we're done here?"

He touched his chin, looking thoughtful. "I don't think Misato Katsuragi would like that."

This… kid knew Misato's name. "Why's that?" and why would he care.

"She once said that… people who can't get drunk are a waste of alcohol. When I was given some of her beer she called it sacrilege."

"You were given some of her beer? Well, there's your problem then," Kaji said jokingly, one eye on the download progress. Someone giving _an angel _some of Misato's beer? They must have one hell of a death wish, that was all he could say.

Still, if this kid couldn't get drunk, then he might also resist some of the things Kaji was idly contemplating slipping into those drinks. "How do you know Misato, anyway?"

A pause, red eyes watching him contemplatively, and even though the kid had an aura of meditative peace, the dark room and his nature lent the silence more than enough of an air of menace to have Kaji putting a hand in his pocket, verifying that his comp was still there.

That was when he realized that he should have been reaching for his gun, because if this one could make computers dance to his tune?

Guns were useless against AT fields… Except no, not if the harmonizer was active they weren't.

The harmonizer that ran on the comp. When this angel could control technology. Maybe the comps had some kind of protection against that, maybe not… but at least it was a chance. Much more of a chance than he would have had without a comp, than any ordinary human would have without an Eva. With an angel in the room, and no witnesses.

Not that an angel would care about witnesses: this one couldn't be too committed to trying to pass for human, not when he was aware that he sucked this badly at it.

"You are afraid of me. To you, I am a monster," the kid said, and Kaji would rather see tears in someone's eyes than a smile like that on someone's face. Tears were easy, you just gave them a hug and rubbed their back and then you didn't have to look at the damn things. "Shinji has been my friend, in the past. Has mourned my death even knowing who and what I am. There is a movie… You showed it to us, in fact. There were cowboys, and one of them was facing a battle he could not win. Going to certain death. One of his enemies asked him why he would do such a thing."

'For my friend,' that was why.

'Seriously? I've got many friends,' the other guy'd said. Many friends and only one life: something like that wasn't worth throwing your life away.

'Yeah, well, I've only got the one.'

"Misato Katsuragi is important to Shinji. In some worlds we are related – in some worlds you and Misato are married – but that is the reason Misato's opinion matters to me. Because she gave Shinji a home, and a home can lead one to happiness. Even if she has never succeeded in granting him happiness, at least she has tried. You have tried to help them both. I wish you both well."

To make his friend, _his only friend_, happy.

The download finished, and maybe it wasn't just seeing the screen change out of the corner of his eye that made Kaji glance away from the angel.

A hug was probably the best way to deal with a smile like that, too – he wouldn't even have to hear the crying – but touching an angel?

When apparently death wishes were bad?

More movement made him glance back in time to see a bare foot and the tail end of that white smock vanish from sight. Kaji could have followed him, but he was too aware that he'd lost that round. There'd been an opening to exploit, urgent reason to exploit it (how much did this angel _know_, if he was telling the truth?) and he hadn't.

He might as well have declared himself a coward, might as well have drawn his gun and declared his hatred for all angels just as vehemently as a drunk and grieving Misato. Because that was why he'd hesitated, why he hadn't pounced on an opportunity like that.

Kaji was already hiding his flash drive on his person, already reviewing the partial map of this place he'd managed to get and memorized to try to figure out the best way to get out of here. Because apparently no, he hadn't adequately protected himself from the security systems before he came in here, and who knew whether or not he'd have help on the way back.

Because he'd just made it clear that it didn't matter _how _useful that boy made himself, how much help he gave Kaji. It wasn't going to be enough to make Kaji trust him, it wasn't going to be enough for Kaji to feel any need to repay it.

Kaji might use the demons he summoned, but he had absolutely no qualms about letting them get killed or sacrificing them in fusion, because he knew they'd kill him if they had the chance. The one he'd first summoned had tried to do exactly that. Trust an angel, when they were trying to wipe out the human race?

With friends, there was give and take. With enemies? If they gave you an inch, take a mile. The angels were almost certainly responsible for Second Impact. They'd already taken too damn much from the human race. Even if this one was sincere, was Kaji supposed to be grateful for his help? When it was only a drop in the bucket?

A bucket deep enough to hold the sea now stained blood-red.

He'd been sounded out, offered an alliance, and his immediate, gut reaction had been no. If he had time to think he would have tried to play along, see how much more he could get out of this, but his bullshit had been too slow off the mark this time. He hadn't been able to pretend he cared.

And the thing was he had cared, at least a little: it was hard not to, when there was a smile like that on someone's face, seeing someone ache that deep, for long enough they'd had to learn to paper it over. For the sake of other people. Anyone worth a damn would care if they saw a smile like that, since it meant someone who was thinking of other people, and their feelings, even in the depths of their own utter misery.

But this was an angel, so no, Kaji didn't care that much. Angels weren't human any more than demons were, and who knew, maybe this one's complete failure as an actor was itself an act.

Well, no use crying over spilt milk: what he needed to worry about now was that he'd been too busy watching the angel to pay as much attention to the route down here as he should have. This lab complex wasn't on the map he'd managed to procure: typical SEELE.

* * *

Thumping and scraping in the distance: he should have headed the other way, but a worker should know how to get out of here, he thought as he stepped over another sleeping scientist. If people were beginning to recover from the angel's sleep spell, it wasn't long before someone would manage to get help from outside and start searching the place. If they came loaded for rebel angel, Kaji definitely couldn't afford to be here, demons or no demons.

Assuming the angel wasn't on SEELE's side to begin with, but no, that was getting a little ridiculous. It was an angel: if it was going to care what _any _human wanted, it wouldn't be the guys who thought they could keep it contained.

He. _He_ was an angel, Kaji reminded himself. He needed to at least be civil.

Because even though sleep and other ailment spells wore off after awhile, none of these people showed any signs of waking up, and that meant the noise up ahead might be the angel. Or someone with Null Mystic set, in which case they might not be as much of a pushover as Kaji'd hoped… Japan wasn't the only place with an ancient mystic tradition, so if a cult like SEELE didn't have their own devil summoners, he'd be very surprised.

Kaji restrained a chuckle as he thought of something. Flipping over his comp, he pulled up the area scan screen.

And enemy scan.

'Fallen Tabris,' huh?

"All those you call angels can tell when they are being watched," he heard from around two corners.

"Good to know, but do you know how to get out of here? Phantasm only gets me through walls, it won't get me to higher floors."

Silence, while the angel decided whether or not to help him. "Can you wait until I've replaced the tube cover… No, I might as well escort you out now. Even with the clone, there's no way they'll fall for this. They haven't before, and the tube wasn't broken those times." A sigh, defeat so familiar it didn't rankle at all.

"Clone?" Kaji said, as he rounded the last corner and saw a massive curved piece of transparent high-tech pseudoglass with one side wedged into a corner as the angel held up the other one, concentrating hard on the geometry as he tried to turn it to fit it through one of the hall doors. "Trying to keep them from realizing you've escaped?"

"If we try enough times, eventually it will be good enough," he said almost absently as he looked up to judge the height of the ceiling again, and Kaji wondered how many times he'd told himself that.

"The way I've heard it, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is madness."

"We're all mad here," was the boy's response as he braced his foot on the doorframe to pull on the curved sheet of glass twice his height, and even though Kaji recognized the quote he wondered at the 'we.'

"Can't you just…" he wondered, waggling his hand to indicate magic. Or something. (AT fields.)

A corner scraped the ceiling, but only briefly: it looked like the angel had left enough space. "Not without setting off detectors. And I've been kept in that tube almost this entire life: even if this body builds muscle fast," –er than a human's, "it will only grow what is needed, so I still need exercise before I'll be able to function normally."

Kaji remembered what Misato said, the muscle atrophy that came from all those years locked up, tied to a chair. That was why people had to exercise: the body would only develop as much muscle as you proved it needed. "How'd you get a comp, then?"

"The device you're carrying? I don't have one."

"Then how'd you put the guards to sleep without setting off AT field detectors?"

"What you call the AT field is the light of the soul," the angel said as he set down the plexiglass long enough to flex his hands before shifting his grip further down, starting to push it along the floor now that it was almost through the door. "So it is a radiant force, one that can be used to make broadcasts, but I can also use more conventional energies. Broadcasting a certain brain wave pattern is one of the safer ways to incapacitate Lilim, although I wouldn't try it on Tokyo-3."

"Because it wouldn't work on that many people?"

"Because some of them might be driving, or operating heavy machinery. Even when the city is in lockdown, some people are still carrying out their tasks. Or trying to avoid the gears." As the buildings came down. "It is possible to knock out all of Tokyo-3: one of the others did it a few times, although she… was using a different type of brainwave." A less nice one, from the sound of it. "NERV is shielded at least a little by the Black Egg, but the designers wanted certain frequencies to be able to penetrate those vessels. That is how the angels can hear the call of Lilith, who lies buried at the heart of NERV."

"Lilith? I thought it was Adam."

"Well, you usually do bring Adam there, and there was one string of worlds where it was _only _Adam there… I was surprised when I did see Lilith on her cross once again, after so many worlds where Gendo Ikari destroyed what was left of her body so the only remaining flesh of Lilith would be Unit 01, and thus his wife's vessel could not be destroyed without dooming the Lilim as well. I don't know if he realized that such insurance against SEELE was not necessary, or he realized that holding Lilim survival hostage would not deter them from their goals, not when those goals require your destruction to begin with." The glass bumped into one of the angel's toes, and he winced. "Forgive me: I need to focus on figuring out how to transport this. The closest thing I've ever done to this is moving pianos."

It wasn't like people would ask an angel to do manual labor.

"So how am I supposed to get out of here before they realize something's up?" Kaji wondered, because that scrape on the ceiling, a few dents in the doorframe… The trail of something big and this-shaped being moved from wherever these spares were kept to wherever the angel was kept was going to be pretty obvious, whenever SEELE recovered.

When he glanced back at the angel, he wondered if the angel could tell what Kaji was looking at even when it wasn't him, because now he was looking at those dents, that scrape. "Lilim are very observant sometimes," he said, and sighed. "I'll take you out now."

Giving up so easily, after saying what amounted to 'practice makes perfect?' "Thanks," was what Kaji said aloud, because after all the goal was to get the angel to do what he wanted. Looking a gift horse in the mouth wasn't the same as turning it down.

"There will be other times," he said, with a sort of cheerful fatalism. "There are too many random factors in this one. I've seen comps before, but they were created by a 'Steven' that time. SEELE and Gendo Ikari are far better at adapting to changes in the scenario than I am. Even if Shinjiro will be upset with me for feeling this way, I think that in the end all I will be able to do is die, and try to give Rei and Shinji hope, but since this world is almost certainly doomed there isn't any harm in becoming one more random factor myself."

"What do you mean, we're almost certainly doomed?" Kaji objected.

The angel frowned, but at himself, not at Kaji. "I need to bring hope, not… This is why I stopped trying to do too much: I'm not very good at having the proper effect on Lilim, but you did ask… I stopped keeping count of how many worlds I have seen." Because the angel didn't want to know any more than he thought Kaji did. "Every single one of them has ended. Even if Third Impact is kept from being total, the world must still be restored. In this world, there are enemies other than the angels and SEELE. If Third Impact were to occur, they would move in to destroy the remnants of the Lilim before the world restoration ritual could be performed. The only plan I have, other than relying on Shinji, will not work here. I know of nothing I can do for this world, other than die at the proper time, so my instinct was to do nothing but wait for that time to come."

How many doomed worlds? Hundreds, thousands? If the comps existed in some and not others, if there were that many 'random factors,' then what was the only constant in all the doomed worlds that contained this angel?

The question answered itself.

One of the only constants, Kaji reminded himself, because if he wasn't fair he'd certainly miss important things.

If the angel was telling the truth, he almost wanted to believe that the reason all those worlds ended was because this angel was working to end them. For this angel to keep trying, and trying, to save people, to save Shinji, and in the end be the key reason they were all destroyed?

"You're wondering if I'm to blame," the angel knew. "You Lilim wall all others out, and yet the lights of your souls all scream for attention: you wear your hearts on your sleeves, you are starved for understanding, even from your enemies. All of you are dying for lack of empathy, and yet you so rarely offer it to others. I think this is one of the very few worlds in which Shinji will recognize my offer of friendship for what it is." Would know what someone caring for him looked like, instead of hearing Kaworu state simple facts, such as how Shinji was considered a hero, not a failure, by most of the world, and going 'what is this?' since he had exactly zero experience with people being nice to him. "Here, he is not starved enough to latch on to any scrap of empathy he is given. It might in fact be impossible for me to become his friend in his world, when he is surrounded by Lilim who have worked to become his friend, worked to understand and have sympathy for him. When he has friends, why risk betraying them by allowing an angel into his circle?" the angel in question asked, and smiled.

Kaji _really wished he'd stop smiling like that_.

* * *

_In a DeSu fate Link, Kaworu's Rank 5 would probably be Lucifer (rebelling against those who desire to wipe out human individuality), but I wonder what his Rank 3 would be? If Shinji was someone's fate link, I bet his Level 5 would be Messiah. _

_In Campus Apocalypse, Kaworu's character in an MMO is Fallen Angel Tabris. The complete lack of subtlety there is actually deliberate: he can detect the presence of other angels, so he knows one is hiding in that MMO and he's trying to call them out to fight him._

_Really since he's the same sort of being as Rei he should be in the same class as she is, but 'Femme Adam?' Then there's how Gendo calls killing him 'deicide' in Rebuild, so Gendo at least categorizes him as a Deity. _

_Blood wine and angel stigma would be appropriate race skills, given Kaworu's self-sacrifice (in front of a cross no less in the anime), but eventually I decided the heck with it and went with the Campus Apocalypse reference._

_Especially since Fallen equals rebel angel/no longer an angel, which would be a bit of proof he doesn't share the goals of the other angels, of any type. _

_Trying to get back to writing after being mostly out of action for a month. Wish I could have pulled off the Shinji/Shinjiro thing better, but my brain. _


End file.
